Modernising factory IT in ICT manufacturing with Azure Local.
- A global ICT manufacturer faced rising VMware costs, low transparency and latency‑sensitive factory workloads.
- Nordcloud designed and implemented an Azure Local–based hybrid platform that enabled full VMware exit, unified monitoring and a reusable blueprint for future sites and workloads.
Project Summary.
The Challenge.
The customer, a global ICT manufacturer, stood at a pivotal moment. Their global manufacturing operations relied on a traditional VMware‑based setup that no longer aligned with their ambitions. They needed a major factory modernisation, but this required more transparency, more automation and more cloud‑enabled capabilities than their legacy platform could offer. Additionally, the licensing costs grew to unsustainable levels.
Yet they couldn’t just move to public cloud. Factory systems are inherently latency‑sensitive: milliseconds matter when production lines are in motion. Any delay, any downtime, could result not only in halted operations but also in losing entire batches of already‑manufactured goods.
The company needed a different path – a hybrid one – where the control and immediacy of on‑premises infrastructure could blend with the visibility and operational maturity of the cloud. And they needed to deliver it across all factory sites around the world.
Before Nordcloud was brought in, the customer had already chosen Azure Local as the strategic platform for their VMware exit. But Azure Local was a new territory – for the customer, for the market and for many partners. They needed expertise, architectural direction and hands‑on experience to turn that decision into a working reality. That’s where Nordcloud came in.
The Solution.
Nordcloud provided trusted architects who could guide and support a complex transformation. They worked hand-in-hand with the customer’s platform team. On a technical side, the mission was clear.
Help the internal teams design, build and operate an Azure Local platform capable of replacing VMware at all factory sites, while fully aligning with corporate guardrails and clearing every architecture and security board review.
But there was an unexpected layer to the work – the human side.
The project brought together dozens of people across different countries, time zones and domains, creating a truly cross-functional, international team. While many team members were experts in VMware, for some, this was their first hands-on experience with Azure and Azure Local. The factories were vocal, engaged and keen to understand how the new solution would improve visibility into their infrastructure. Nordcloud’s architects realised they were not only designing a platform but also supporting a broader transformation in skills, collaboration and ways of working.
Unique design to enable visibility and governance.
One of the most important early realisations was that Azure Local couldn’t simply be implemented “the VMware way”. The cloud governance model the customer used elsewhere in the business needed to extend down to the factory floor – otherwise the hybrid strategy would fall short. This led to a significant architectural decision.
Instead of placing everything in one or two subscriptions, Nordcloud aligned the design to a hub‑and‑spoke subscription model, mirroring the cloud‑native landing zones provided by the public cloud teams.
This shift fundamentally changed how access, governance and monitoring could work across the environment. It also required revisiting some early assumptions about how Azure Local could be used at scale.
With this model in place, the customer could finally treat their on‑premises workloads like part of their cloud estate: visible, governed and manageable with the same tools.
Bringing operational transparency.
One of the most significant pain points in the customer’s VMware era was limited transparency. Factory IT teams had little visibility into the underlying infrastructure. They couldn’t easily see storage trends, compute usage or cluster health. When issues arose, they often depended on central teams – creating delays and operational bottlenecks. Nordcloud helped the team take a fresh approach.
The architects designed an access model that gave factory teams visibility into their infrastructure through Azure. Suddenly, every site could open the Azure portal and see the same monitoring, logs and metrics as the central team.
Migration.
Once hardware arrived on sites, the migration phase began. Azure Migrate and AKS on Azure Local became the backbone for moving VMs and containers away from VMware. Some factories even took the driver’s seat in their migrations, with Nordcloud architects providing guidance and troubleshooting.
When migration was completed at all sites, the legacy VMware clusters were decommissioned and the VMware licence increase was avoided. Nordcloud stayed to help reinforce operational readiness and ensure a smooth handover.
Results.
The customer now had a cloud‑enabled hybrid environment, capable of running VM and container workloads on‑premises with cloud visibility, cloud policies and cloud‑scale management.
Successful replacement of VMware at all factory sites
Significant cost savings through eliminating VMware licensing hikes, removing Google Anthos overhead and running AKS on Azure Local at no extra cost
Cloud‑enabled operations across all factories, with unified monitoring, automation and logging via Azure Arc
Infrastructure transparency for factory IT teams
A scalable blueprint for Azure Local and modern hybrid architecture, reusable for future sites and workloads
