Summary: Microsoft disclosed that security software company Symantec has been migrating workloads to Azure. The project is expected to take 18 months and end in March 2018.
Details: Symantec has evaluated around 200 apps and classified them as: 1) easy to move; 2) those that need work to move; and 3) those that need to stay in-house for the time being. It has already migrated 105 apps, some of which have been tweaked or re-written before the move to take advantage of cloud data centres. Others may be adapted after they are migrated. Symantec will migrate many of its consumer-focused software, such as Norton AV, to Azure, while key financial applications will continue to be run in-house.
Addressable market: The 200 apps at Symantec, with half already move to cloud, that sit in on-premise data centres is a very interesting data point. It shows how much infrastructure still resides in-house and how dispersed it can be (and correspondingly an inefficient use of resources). That it has taken this long to move to cloud shows two things: 1) how much upside there still when it comes to addressable market; and 2) how fast things are starting to move as cloud matures.
Angle: The primary driver behind the project has been cost reduction, with Symantec aiming to close six of its existing data centres largely as a result of the move. Symantec will now sell its software from the Microsoft Azure marketplace and Microsoft will use Symantec security in Azure. Symantec is already on the AWS marketplace and its engineers and developers will continue to use AWS for development work.
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