NetApp wins Microsoft Global Partner of the Year Award for Azure Migration

No Azure migration is too big when you combine experienced partners and Azure NetApp Files. And that’s exactly how NetApp, in collaboration with our partner Capgemini, won the 2024 Microsoft Global Partner of the Year Award for Azure Migration.

In less than 5 months, with zero downtime, NetApp and Capgemini seamlessly migrated a 2.5-PiB-large, 27-system SAP landscape to Azure and helped Coca-Cola Bottlers Japan Inc. (CCBJI): 

• Reduce TCO by 30% 
• Reduce cutover time by 50% 
• Decrease failover time to disaster recovery site by 90% 
• Boost application response by 40% 
• Automate and accelerate distribution from months to hours 

Managing over 90% of Coca-Cola’s business for 125 million Japanese consumers, CCBJI’s migration to Azure involved the world’s largest SAP Db2 database with one of the highest database update frequencies. To be successful, the migration required exceptional teamwork, industry-leading technology, and the power of strategic partnerships. 

The strength of our long-time partnership with Capgemini, combined with our experience working alongside Microsoft, allowed us to make the impossible a reality for this customer’s epic migration. Capgemini brought a wealth of experience migrating highly complex SAP environments to Azure, including migrations for other divisions of Coca-Cola in other parts of the world. In CCBJI’s expert opinion, a migration to Azure, powered by Azure NetApp Files, was the best solution for CCBJI to meet its needs for performance, agility, and scalability.  

Of course, as in any project, there were challenges to overcome along the way. As we quickly learned, our biggest challenge with this project was scale. Not only does CCBJI have 600+ SKUs, but because the Japanese market has an insatiable thirst for new products, CCBJI releases one almost every day. CCBJI had an incredible need for speed and reliability at scale, and we were able to meet these demands effectively. 

A shining success with the CCBJI project was the world’s first Db2 integrations of AzAcSnap for Db2 Backup with Azure NetApp Files backup. Our entire team pushed to achieve this accomplishment by beating timelines and delivering ahead of schedule for CCBJI. 

Since it became generally available just over 5 years ago, Azure NetApp Files has consistently gained praise from partners and customers for enabling the migration of workloads previously thought to be unmigratable to Azure. 

“The work we are doing with Azure NetApp Files, as well as NetApp’s work around basically building a storage operating system, and how we bring these two things together to support our customers’ needs for hybrid infrastructure, has been breakthrough work.”  

Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO 

This breakthrough work with Microsoft continues to result in innovation after innovation, and we are continually enhancing the capabilities and availability of Azure NetApp Files to meet our customers’ evolving needs.  

Azure NetApp Files enhancements over the past year include:

• Backup 
• Cloud Backup for Virtual Machines on Azure NetApp Files datastores for Azure VMware solution 
• Standard storage with cool access 
• Application volume group for Oracle 
• Large volumes 
• Customer-managed keys for Azure NetApp Files volume encryption 

Each enhancement helps NetApp® customers solve additional data challenges so they can run their businesses more efficiently and do more with less. An increasing number of customers are relying on Azure NetApp Files to migrate databases such as Oracle, SAP, and SQL Server, as well as other mission-critical workloads such as HPC, EDA, and VDI, to Azure.  

In addition to Azure NetApp Files, we offer a range of solutions on Azure Marketplace. We have 30 years of experience in delivering superior data management and storage solutions to global enterprises. 

With more than a dozen Microsoft Partner of the Year awards already under our belt, this win with Capgemini for CCBJI feels extra special. Azure NetApp Files enables organizations to migrate even their most challenging, most storage-intensive workloads to Azure. And Azure migrations are now the foundation that enables customers to take advantage of the amazing AI and GenAI solutions that Microsoft is pioneering. I’m excited that NetApp is playing such a key role in that journey for our customers; we can contribute so much to enable their success. Data is the fuel for AI—and data runs on NetApp. 

“I am inspired by the capability and creativity in our partner ecosystem, and this year’s winners beautifully demonstrate the best of what’s possible with AI and the Microsoft Cloud.” 

Nicole Dezen, Chief Partner Officer and Corporate Vice President at Microsoft 

Learn how to accelerate your Azure migrations with Azure NetApp Files, watch CCBJI’s customer success video, and see all the winners and finalists on Microsoft’s Partner of the Year Awards page.