INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud
Bluegrass migrates
over 50 websites and
applications to Azure
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D
igital Transformation specialist
Bluegrass Digital has completed a
large migration of over 50 .Net and
Linux websites to Azure. Azure, AWS and Google Cloud, but over the
past few years we decided to focus more
on building competency in Azure given our
Microsoft partnership,” he said.
The migration covered a range of website
CMS platforms such as WordPress, Drupal
and Umbraco which have been deployed
to different regions across Europe, US and
Africa based on customer needs. With the new Azure data centres in
Johannesburg and Cape Town, Microsoft
can now deliver all the benefits of the cloud
to a local South African market at local
pricing. Azure is fast in terms of deployment,
operation and scalability.
More companies are using Azure to build
applications faster and are also now using
smarter tools to manage performance.
It offers many different options for app
development in the cloud. This is the
second wave of cloud computing – where
companies like Bluegrass focus on delivering
the innovation their customers demand, not
the infrastructure required to run them.
Bluegrass provides its clients with skills and
support in managing their applications using
its ‘business as usual’ model. This gives the
competitive advantage for the companies
to adopt Azure. Being the most up-to-date
cloud technology, the infrastructure and
applications could be made agile.
“We have also invested heavily in educating
our team on Azure,” added Durrant. “This
Bluegrass Digital is a specialist web
and mobile software development
company helping companies deliver
Digital Transformation in their business.
The company also boasts Microsoft
competencies in Azure Cloud Platform and
Azure Application Development.
year alone, we have already been involved
in many migrations to Azure. We help
our clients drive business growth through
data-led user experiences, innovation and
technology built to scale.”
With Azure, companies can now modernise
their applications with the flexibility of the
cloud and with low latency and the power
of these data centres, they can consider
things like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and
Machine Learning.
“More recently, we partnered with Clover SA
to redesign and re-platform many of its B2B
and B2C websites from the ground up,” said
Durrant. “We consolidated its corporate and
brand digital assets onto a single technology
stack and migrated all its websites to the
cloud on Microsoft Azure.”
Durrant says there’s more maturity in the UK
and US markets.
“For South Africa, there are reasons for that,”
he explained. “Locally, we’ve had problems
with latency, connectivity and the basic
geography. Data sovereignty has been an
issue and there’s been a lack of trust, from
the CIO’s perspective.”
Nick Durrant, Bluegrass Digital CEO, believes
there are significant savings for customers
moving to Azure. “We run applications across
Azure helps companies transform and reduce
costs with an energy-efficient infrastructure
spanning more than 100 highly secure
facilities worldwide, linked by one of the
largest networks on earth.
“Reduce the cost, the time and the
complexity of operating a global
infrastructure while meeting your local data
residency needs,” said Durrant.
Nick Durrant, Bluegrass Digital CEO
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INTELLIGENTCIO
“Azure lets you deliver services at the scale
you need to reach your customers and
partners, wherever they are.” n
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