Move your last servers into Microsoft Azure.

You have your email, files, phones, security, device management, and AI inside Microsoft 365. But you probably still have a business application, a client-server legacy application that's still important to your business and well supported by the company that built it. It isn't changing anytime soon. It lives on servers: a SQL Server, an application server, a file server, domain controllers.

Here's what we do. Instead of buying new servers to host it on-premises or in another data center, we build it out in an Azure virtual network, where you buy just the compute and storage you need, when you need it. We set up a virtual firewall on the Azure network and connect it to your on-premises firewall with a site-to-site VPN. Business internet today is fast and low latency (often in the 10 to 60 millisecond range), which is as good as a LAN connection and works well even for SQL Server.

Windows Server licensing, including the client access licenses, comes with the Azure virtual machine. We add a SQL Server license through Azure, or, if you already own SQL Server licenses, we bring them over with Azure Hybrid Benefit so you don't pay twice. We keep costs down by scheduling servers to shut down when nobody's using them, and by scaling: up or down to change a server's compute power and memory, and out or in to add or remove servers as demand changes.

With Premium SSD disks, a single Azure virtual machine has a financially backed uptime SLA of 99.9%, which you can't match hosting it yourself. Disaster recovery is built in, so you don't need a DR system. You do need backups, and we store them redundantly in the data center and in a second set in another region. Adding or reducing compute takes minutes.

Your identities come along. We connect Entra ID to your Windows Server Active Directory, or use Microsoft Entra Domain Services, which runs domain controllers for you in Azure and connects to Entra ID. Your people get single sign-on with conditional access. They connect through Entra Private Access, a secure connection straight to your Azure virtual network and your local network, with no traditional VPN for users. We can even turn desktop applications into web apps, with Windows 365 Enterprise Cloud PCs on the same Azure virtual network as the servers.

And here's the bigger picture: SQL Server is very accessible to Copilot AI. We can set up a Copilot agent that connects securely to your SQL Server with read-only access, and gives each person permission to reach only the data they're allowed to see. We often don't need to involve the company that supports the software, because we go straight to the database. Then your people can chat with that business data: profitability per client or per employee, costs and expenses, where your inventory stands.

Eventually, the application itself becomes a cloud service, with web and mobile apps, access controlled by Entra ID single sign-on, and Copilot connected through its API. Then there are no servers left to maintain, even in Azure.