Manchester Metropolitan University supports more than 40,000 students and 4,000 staff, with technology playing a critical role in teaching, research, and day-to-day operations. As expectations around digital services continued to grow, the university needed a cloud strategy that balanced modernisation, resilience, and risk.
🔎At a glance
- Higher education institution with large, diverse user base
- Legacy infrastructure nearing end of support
- Need to modernise securely without disrupting critical services
- Hybrid-first Azure transformation using VMware AVS
🚨The challenge
Manchester Metropolitan University wanted to modernise its digital infrastructure to better support evolving ways of working and learning. Existing on-premises systems were becoming harder to maintain, increasing security and compliance risks, and limiting scalability.
At the same time, a full move away from on-premises infrastructure wasn’t realistic. Certain workloads still needed to remain local, and the university required a carefully managed transition that minimised disruption to students and staff.
💡The approach
Working closely with the university, the team helped shape a hybrid cloud strategy that combined the benefits of Azure with the ability to retain and modernise existing VMware workloads.
This included:
- Designing and building an Azure Landing Zone to provide a secure, scalable cloud foundation
- Using Azure VMware Solution (AVS) to enable rapid migration without re-architecting workloads
- Supporting a structured discovery and assessment phase to identify suitable workloads
- Migrating virtual machines using lift-and-shift techniques where appropriate, while improving monitoring, backup, and resilience
By following Microsoft best practice and the Cloud Adoption Framework, the transformation could progress quickly while reducing risk and complexity.
☑️The outcome
- Successful migration of 500 virtual machines to Azure with a 98.5% first-time success rate
- Improved security posture and compliance alignment
- Reduced reliance on ageing on-premises infrastructure
- More predictable hosting and maintenance costs
- A hybrid platform capable of supporting future growth and innovation
- Improved environmental footprint through infrastructure consolidation
Following the success of the Azure migration, the university went on to further modernise its on-premises estate with a new VMware HCI solution, creating a cohesive hybrid environment across sites.
⚡️Why this matters
- Hybrid cloud strategies can offer a practical, lower-risk route to modernisation
- VMware on Azure can accelerate transformation without forcing immediate redesign
- Large, complex organisations don’t need to choose between cloud and on-prem — both can coexist effectively
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