Azure migration success in the upper mid-market: Microsoft award winner focuses on app migration and cost assessment

Microsoft partners and ISVs have developed a wide variety of go-to market strategies as their clients make more cloud-based investments. But as one 2022 Microsoft Partner award winner has found, consistency and a systematic approach to the market is not enough for building a successful cloud practice.

The reality is that cloud planning in the mid-market is all over the map today. Businesses experiencing massive growth may be asking for cloud migration services as soon as possible. Others may be ready to re-tool core systems with newer cloud services with a plan that spans many years.

US-based partner Core BTS recently received Microsoft’s Partner of the Year award for Azure Migration for its focus on upper mid-market companies and its expertise in improving productivity in the cloud. Tony Guidi, SVP of Strategic Partnerships at Core BTS spoke with MSCloudNews about the company’s work in the mid-market. The company typically focuses on service organizations with 2,500 customers or more in industries including healthcare, retail, defense, manufacturing, K-12 education, and local government.

According to Guidi, Core BTS focuses on “the entire cloud journey” by using Microsoft solution assessment programs together with their own app migration and cost assessment tools, like their Azure Accelerate tool that compares the costs of running workloads on-prem versus in Azure. He told MSCN:

We give clients the ammunition they need to go to their board [and make the case for a move to the cloud]. If the board wants to move into Azure, here’s what it will cost. To do this, we help to show how to move apps and associated data and the lift and shift process.

Core BTS received a Partner of the Year award for its digital transformation project with Ernie Green Industries (EG). Since 2010, EG has doubled its manufacturing capacity in the US and Dominican Republic, resulting in siloed data between facilities. EG adopted Core BTS’ Azure Accelerate to map out a migration strategy. Core BTS offered EG its OneContract bundled service model with managed services,  security, and license advisory services, as well as presentations for the EG board of directors about app modernization and cloud optimization. Core BTS is in the process of building an Azure environment for EG with capabilities including IoT Hub.