Azure-Based SAP Modernisation for a UK Defence Organisation

Sunfish was engaged by a UK defence organisation to lead the modernisation of its SAP landscape, migrating a critical, end-of-life on-premise environment to Microsoft Azure. The programme required end-to-end project management, complex supplier coordination and absolute assurance around security, resilience and business continuity.

The client’s UK-hosted SAP platform was running on ageing, data centre–based infrastructure approaching end of life. Compute and storage capacity were close to their limits, support costs were increasing, and a traditional hardware refresh would only delay the problem rather than solve it.

Compounding the risk, architectural documentation for the existing SAP estate was incomplete, making a like-for-like replacement both risky and potentially expensive. The organisation faced a strategic decision: reinvest in on-premise infrastructure or design a future-ready SAP platform in Microsoft Azure that could deliver scalability, resilience, sustainability and compliance.

Given the organisation’s regulatory environment and critical operations, any migration needed to be delivered with clearly defined success criteria, rigorous governance and minimal disruption to the business.

Sunfish provided full lifecycle project management, acting as the Systems Integrator across a complex multi-supplier delivery landscape. From inception through to cutover and early life support, Sunfish established governance, scope and integrated planning to align all parties around shared outcomes.

A structured Stage-Gate delivery approach was adopted to manage risk and ensure design and delivery decisions were validated at every phase. During testing, Sunfish delivered comprehensive Test Management, designing and executing a rigorous, risk-based test strategy using industry-standard models and tools.

Performance, security and functional testing were completed end-to-end to ensure the platform met or exceeded acceptance criteria prior to go-live. Sunfish also led cutover planning, command centre execution and early life support to ensure a controlled and stable transition into live service.

The programme successfully delivered the migration of the client’s UK-hosted SAP systems to Microsoft Azure with minimal business disruption at cutover. The final design was ratified by Microsoft and implemented under Sunfish’s systems integration governance, ensuring end-to-end integrity across infrastructure, networking and SAP application layers.

Clear operational run-books, monitoring and support models were established, providing long-term stability and a strong foundation for future optimisation.

Lastly, the time taken to run a report was overall reduced by 34%.

“Their ability to operate credibly at executive level while maintaining detailed control of delivery artefacts was instrumental. One of the most material risks we faced was incomplete architectural documentation within our legacy estate. Sunfish approached this methodically, applying forensic analysis and structured discovery to de-risk the target design before migration.”