Maersk migrates regional datacenters to Microsoft Azure
Copenhagen-based integrated transport and logistics firm A.P. Moller - Maersk, one of the world’s leading container shipping and ports companies, migrated five of its regional datacenters to Microsoft Azure.
Partnering with Microsoft Enterprise Services, Maersk sought to improve its performance while reducing operational risk. Choosing Microsoft as its cloud partner, Maersk looked to improve its operations and customer service and create new revenue streams.
Previously, A.P. Moller – Maersk had crucial data housed in three separate continents, with a large portion of its data stored in five regional datacenters in Europe, Asia and the U.S.A. This prevented the firm’s employees from having full visibility of the company’s information and, additionally, the datacenters were close to capacity.
These issues, along with performance problems, for example outages and reduced employee productivity, and security concerns prompted Maersk to act. Andy Laurence, A.P. Moller – Maersk Senior Director Head of Production Services, said: “Security was an aspiration that we weren’t meeting. We needed to figure out how to better secure our business and our files, and ensure that all of our data in every location was protected.”
After researching its options, Maersk opted to partner with Microsoft Enterprise Services and migrate the contents of its datacenters to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Andy Laurence said: “As we made the digital transformation, we needed a reputable partner with the right experience. Based on our selection criteria, we found that Microsoft Services came out the best.”
Working together, Maersk and Microsoft drew up business improvement initiatives and an implementation roadmap, using the latest in technology to assist in employee adoption. In total, decommissioning the datacenters and moving workloads to the cloud took just six months.
Ending its reliance on obsolete technology, migrating to the cloud allowed Maersk to significantly cut its operating costs and tighten its data security. Andy Laurence added: “We now have disaster recovery and failover, which we lacked before. We’re in a much better position.”
The move to Microsoft Azure also gave the company improved performance and scalability, which in turn improves productivity, while providing better visibility across the company’s information.
