Formula 1 Car Brand Achieves Digital-First Vision Through Rapid Azure Migration

A leading British car manufacturer with a Formula 1 race team.

The company needed to make a rapid data center exit and migration to Azure when its existing premises was relocated to a new site. The organization had recently adopted a digital-first strategy to enable it to scale, optimize and minimize its carbon footprint.

The client required the migration to be completed within ten weeks. It also needed to be able to continue operating during the migration process and to pause activity on race weekends.

This client needed a partner that could relocate its on-premises IT to the cloud rapidly and reliably, within a condensed timeframe. Crucially, the project had to work around set events in its calendar, with migration activity aligning to its events schedule without delay, so that racing and engineering operations were not impacted.

As a trusted Microsoft Solutions partner and Azure Migration MSP with proven rapid migration experience, Ensono was recommended by Microsoft to handle this migration.

First, we completed an assessment of the client’s environment using the Azure Cloud Assessment. This provided a clear benchmark of what needed to be achieved. We then conducted a series of workshops with the client and created a detailed and phased migration strategy that fit around key events.

The proposed solution was to lift and shift 166 virtual machines, including 146 databases, and redeploy containerized workloads onto Azure. The migration waves included exploring additional services to further streamline operations.

The migration was a success, and Ensono went on to optimize the client’s Azure environment.

By partnering with Ensono, this client was able to meet its data center exit deadline, while working around its race schedule and suffering no interruptions.

The migration also resulted in cost optimizations, with an estimated $960,000 annual saving. Now the client is benefitting from improved application performance, greater efficiency, and new analytical insights for improved business outcomes.