Way back in 2016, Microsoft purchased LinkedIn which I believe was a very worthwhile investment. To this day, it remains the best business contact platform. I've linked to the original article at the end of this blog post.

LinkedIn operated it's own infrastructure including servers, networks and applications across a diverse list of datacentre locations.

In 2019, three years after the acquisition by Microsoft, LinkedIn announced plans for migration to Azure, moving away from it's existing server and network infrastructure, with a view to integration and leverage of their new relationship with Microsoft.

Migration to Azure made sense for the purpose of integration and cost savings since both were owned by Microsoft.

It makes sense to evaluate potential integration opportunities ready for leverage via the Microsoft relationship, however it also makes sense to weigh up cost + migration + ongoing BAU and support.

Side note - here's where the challenges start, especially for Australian business owners who sign long term contracts in US dollars for services which usually include add-ons not needed to run an application, yet they are "bundled" and of course they all have an additional forever increasing cost.

Businesses are looking to save on costs, even more so now with inflation challenges presenting higher charges for just about everything. Carefully managing company budgets can go a long, long way especially for start-ups who may not yet be in revenue generation mode.

Just because something is big and is surrounded by the lights of advertising as "on trend" it doesn't necessarily equal suitable for all customers and applications.

Migration for the sake of migration rarely improves operational performance, nor does it reduce costs.

This is something many of our new customers have experienced first hand during 2023. 
We've migrated startups to Government clients onto a tailored platform featuring virtual and physical infrastructure with every single client now paying less than 50% of their previous monthly application hosting charges.

Tailored services match requirements whilst providing the best opportunity to reduce costs.

Of these new customers, more than half used remaining monthly budgets to build staging/DR environments and/or hire staff. That's how business technology ads value, not just via buzz words.

Buzz Words are great for pre-sales, but performance and cost count for a long time afterwards.

The point here is always look before you leap.

Create a proper requirements list, weigh up what you really need vs what's on offer (or what you are potentially being shoe-horned into).

Determine the important post-deployment factors such as support, performance monitoring and alerts, application security testing, backups and disaster recovery.

Think twice about barriers to entry such as architecture and design certifications just so you can deploy your business software in the cloud, meeting quotas to obtain discounts and helping others by adding to someone else's "ecosystem". 

You are in business, your business, which should include only your systems with only your requirements and only your costs.

May your application deployments be successful and cost effective, now and into the future.
Oh, and if you need help with any of the above, please feel free to reach out.

article: LinkedIn shelved planned move to Microsoft Azure

Darren Moss

Darren Moss is a senior platform architect with more than 20 years experience designing, building and managing enterprise application infrastructure for banking, telecommunications, broadcast and cloud service providers.

Darren is the General Manager of Cloud365 Asia Pacific region, heading up a team of Infrastructure Support experts in Melbourne, Sydney and Singapore.