The Warehouse Group Undertakes Multi-Year Cloud Migration Aimed At Significant Cost Reduction And Productivity Gains

The Warehouse Group has announced it is migrating the bulk of its operations to Microsoft Azure, a substantial multi-year project aimed at creating cost savings worth millions over the next three years.

With more than 750 on-premises servers, and infrastructure reaching the end of its useful life, The Warehouse Group faced substantial ongoing costs for maintenance and replacement of existing technology. As part of its business optimisation strategy, it has partnered with cloud migration specialist LAB³ to move its applications to Azure public cloud. This will no longer require the company to manage its own infrastructure, providing predictability around cloud costs with greater resilience and security.

“It’s great for our stores to be able to rely on 24/7 accessibility, and no longer be reliant on a single datacentre on our premises. Risk reduction is paramount, and if anything happens to a location in the public cloud, our connection will automatically switch to an alternative site, giving us better resilience and keeping our systems going,” said The Warehouse Group General Manager of Group Technology Operations, Ankit Gupta. 

LAB³ and The Warehouse Group designed the migration process to be staggered over a 12 month period, minimising disruption to stores. Gupta said the key objective was to ensure the business’ more than 12,000 employees didn’t notice any difference throughout.

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“Microsoft recommended LAB³, which enables us to use AI-powered migration tools like Dr Migrate, which uses automation to identify key applications to move to Azure first and achieve the best cost savings, rather than reinvent the whole process ourselves. It’s much faster, easier and cheaper, which perfectly aligns with our ongoing optimisation strategy,” he said.

The move will also enable The Warehouse Group to take advantage of take LAB³’s expertise and IP to accelerate the use of Microsoft’s product suite, including the latest AI technology. The company is already piloting the use of Azure MLOps machine learning to optimise product pricing, as well as generative AI to reduce manual updates to the master product database.

“The Warehouse Group has always been recognised for its competitiveness in the market, and that’s exactly what this partnership will enhance. The cost predictability associated with its cloud transformation in Azure will help The Warehouse Group optimise retail pricing and securely adopt innovative AI technology, putting it in an extremely strong position for the next decade and more,” said Chris Cook, CEO of LAB³. 

Sustainability is also a key factor in the shift to Azure public cloud. The Microsoft New Zealand North cloud region will be up to 98 per cent more energy-efficient than standard on-premises infrastructure, and the LAB³ Dr Migrate tool will allow The Warehouse Group to monitor the carbon footprint of its cloud usage.

“Right now, every business, especially in retail, is being challenged to do more with less, understand their customers better, keep up with the rapid development of AI and be more sustainable. It just makes sense to share the load, and with our New Zealand cloud region being powered by 100 per cent renewable energy from day one, we’re well placed to help local organisations reach their goals faster. We’re thrilled to support one of Aotearoa’s most iconic and environmentally conscious brands to adapt for the future and level up their progress on sustainability even further,” said Vanessa Sorenson, Managing Director of Microsoft New Zealand.

The migration process will occur in multiple stages. Around a third of The Warehouse Group’s applications have already moved to Azure ahead of the local Microsoft cloud region opening later this year.

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