Client
Financial Services
Technology
Windows Server workloads, SQL Server databases,
Summary
Industry: Financial Services
Core business: Aviation leasing and asset management
Number of Employees: 16,000
Geography: EMEA
Workloads Migrated: Windows Server workloads, SQL Server databases, internal business applications, Citrix applications
The problem
The customer is undergoing a major digital transformation driven by its cloud-first strategy. The program ran from October 2024 and included multiple workstreams covering infrastructure, application migration, and operational readiness. The goal was to exit two on-premises data centres inherited through acquisitions by the end of September 2025, by transforming and migrating all services to Microsoft Cloud Technologies. This timeline was driven by upcoming end-of-life deadlines due to incompatibility between data centre hardware including HPE 3Par and VMware vSphere 7 reaching End of Support in October 2025.
The solution
Ergo, a long-standing technology partner of the customer and the leader in M&A technical integrations, was selected to lead the project. Ergo conducted a comprehensive discovery and assessment to understand the workloads, their configurations and inter-dependencies, for every service and application. Based on this, Ergo created a detailed transformation, migration and decommissioning plan. Ergo completed the design and deployment of a suitably tailored Azure Landing Zone, aligning with Microsoft’s Well-Architected Framework principles.
Ergo successfully configured and migrated Windows Server virtual machines and implemented them to Azure. Ergo also migrated existing SQL Server databases to Azure SQL.
Additionally, the customer’s on-premises Citrix solution for application hosting was modernised through Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) deployment. Ergo integrated the new AVD environment with Citrix Cloud, enabling centralised session brokering and secure identity management via Azure.
Security and resilience were primary design requirements. Ergo designed and deployed a Backup and Disaster Recovery solution based on Azure Site Recovery for cyber resilience, optimised recovery time, and business continuity. The security posture was further strengthened by the deployment of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Sentinel to protect infrastructure from cyber threats.
The benefits
This case study demonstrates how a financial services organisation successfully migrated its data center workloads to Microsoft Azure. The migration helped to modernise it’s IT operations, enhance scalability, and improve disaster recovery capabilities.
The transformation program delivered the following outcomes:
- Improved infrastructure scalability and performance
- Enhanced security and compliance posture
- Reduced operational costs and complexity
- Strengthened disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities
- Successful transition to cloud operations with minimal disruption
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