Legacy Business App Migration to Microsoft Azure 2020 | Pricing, Process and How-To | Server Endgame

Microsoft Azure is a tool to migrate a client's legacy on-premise client-server business software to the cloud. Usually this software runs their sales, finance and operations. The software itself is still very important and still well supported by the software developer.

These days companies want to be server-free but they often still have not found that right replacement cloud app to manage sales, finance and operations. They have moved their email, files, phones, security and device management into Microsoft 365 - but since they still have this legacy client-server business app that requires a legacy IT infrastructure: domain controllers, file server, app server, SQL server, a pricey backup and disaster recovery system, 5 year server refresh cycles, expensive internal IT departments and/or expensive external managed IT service contracts.

Servers are a pain in the butt. Seriously. And really, what forward thinking IT manager - or business owner for that matter - wants to focus their time and money on managing servers. This is 2020 (as of publishing this video), not the 1990's. Still, you may not be ready to move your sales, finance and operations business software to a cloud version. Also, you probably have already looked at cloud versions of these business apps - and they just aren't as good as what you already have AND the cost to migrate to an inferior version of your business software is a huge turnoff.

So, if this is your situation, we can use a Microsoft Azure Virtual network to host your virtual servers on your own private virtual network - which you will connect to with a VPN. You'll only pay for the exact processing power we need - WHEN WE NEED IT--and only pay for exactly the data storage we need on premium SSD drives with a 99.9% uptime SLA -financially backed--by Microsoft.

We'll setup the protection of your virtual network with a Cisco Meraki virtual firewall. We'll protect your virtual servers with machine learning threat detection that not only protects your servers from malicious viruses, but it also will protect your servers from unusual behavior from apps and insider threats from administrators with privileged access. Your servers will be protected with Azure Backup - 3 copies of your backup files will be stored in your primary data center region, and 3 copies will be stored at least 500 miles away in a second data center region. If you have a disaster at your office - your servers are safe. If a meteor destroys the primary data center your servers are in, you can opt to have your servers setup for a warm fail-over in the peering data center 500 miles away, and they can be brought up in minutes - all you have to do is reconnect your VPN.

Azure is VERY cost effective and MUCH CHEAPER and a WAY BETTER VALUE that what you will build yourself on-premise. Your on-premise system is so bloated - way too many processing cores, way too much memory, way to much disk capacity and power. In the 1990's and 2000's we had to build servers for a 5-6 year lifespan, but in the world of Microsoft Azure, we only pay to run the servers when we need them; which for most places means running the servers during business hours. They don't need to be running Saturday morning at 2am. You can save SO MUCH MONEY - if you understand some key principals as I outline them here in the video.

Lastly - logging into the Azure portal and spinning up a VM is NOT A BIG DEAL. Doing so is WELL WITHIN YOUR WHEELHOUSE..BUT...**DO NOT** make moving your company's important business apps to Azure your FIRST such project. You will greatly damage your career.

You do not know what you do not know...

You need a Microsoft partner for this job - trust me. Your Microsoft partner can move this along fast, properly spec out the system, save you a ton of money (because you WILL over-spec your cloud servers) and get you launched without lots of pain, drama, unpleasant meetings, stress, ect. Then if you want to take over the management, they will train you on how to manage the system. If you don't want to learn new stuff - they can manage it for you.

When you first login to Azure - it is overwhelming - no doubt about that. That is the way I felt 5 years ago when we decided to start our Azure practice. Our very first project was migrating our own servers to Azure - and we bumped our head MANY TIMES, and had to cancel the migration. Attempt the migration again...stop...try again..and then we finally figured it out. Then we worked on a few small client projects, and some bigger ones and bigger ones until we are where we are at now. The irony is that when I log into the Azure portal these days - I only see 6-7 key Azure services that we use over, and over and over and over. We know how they work, we know how to make them cost effective and we know we can count on them.

We can do the same for your company.

-Wayne