Customer Profile

Customer: OHLA (Spain)
Industry: Construction, Infrastructure & Engineering
Core Business: Global infrastructure development, civil engineering, concessions, and industrial projects
Employees: 25,000+
Geography: Headquartered in Spain with international operations

Timeline

June 2026 – December 2026

Business Challenge

For nearly 20 years, the organization operated its main data center from a long‑standing physical location. As digital transformation accelerated, this legacy environment created limitations:

• Inability to scale to new data and analytics use cases
• High operational overhead for aging infrastructure
• Difficulty implementing modern security, governance, and automation
• Technical constraints blocking adoption of advanced AI and cloud‑native capabilities

To align with its strategic transformation agenda, the company needed a seamless migration from its historic on‑premises data center to Azure — with no interruption to business operations.

ALIANDO’s Migration Methodology

To ensure a structured, low‑risk, and business‑aligned migration, ALIANDO followed a four‑phase modernization methodology.

1. Strategy — Identify Business Outcomes

ALIANDO worked with leadership and technical teams to:

• Clarify desired business outcomes and transformation goals
• Define key performance indicators (KPIs) for the migration
• Align the cloud program with the company’s AI, data, and analytics objectives

This ensured the migration was not just a technical event, but a business enabler.

2. Solution Assessment for Discovery & Planning

Define the Modernization Framework (aligned with the 6Rs)

ALIANDO assessed each workload using industry‑standard modernization strategies (Rehost, Refactor, Rearchitect, etc.) to determine the most efficient migration approach.

Discover the Digital Estate & Application Portfolio

Using Azure Migrate and dependency mapping tools, ALIANDO:

• Discovered all Windows and Linux servers
• Analyzed existing SQL Server workloads
• Mapped inter‑application dependencies
• Created a complete, validated application & infrastructure inventory

Define the Migration Strategy & Plan

This phase produced:

• A prioritized list of migration waves
• Routing, network, and identity requirements
• Right‑sizing recommendations
• A full project execution plan and sequencing strategy

3. Execute Iterative Migration Waves

The migration was executed in coordinated waves to reduce risk and ensure operational continuity:

• Windows and Linux VMs were rehosted into Azure
• SQL Server workloads were migrated into Azure SQL and SQL Server on Azure VMs
• Applications were validated wave by wave, with handoff to operations completed after each iteration

This phased approach allowed extreme coordination between internal teams, partners, and cloud specialists — ensuring precise execution and minimal downtime.

4. Post‑Migration Optimization

After workloads were stabilized in Azure, ALIANDO delivered:

• Centralized monitoring via Azure Monitor & Log Analytics
• Automated backup & disaster recovery configuration
• FinOps optimization, including cost controls and usage monitoring
• Security hardening & governance enhancements across the landing zone

This ensured long‑term operability, resilience, and cost efficiency.

Customer Testimonial (Extract)

“Migrating a data center is not a flashy project — there are no brilliant demos or dramatic before‑and‑after moments. Often, the best news is simply ‘no news, good news’. Keeping the team motivated in such a context is one of the greatest leadership challenges. After exceptional teamwork, we successfully completed the migration of our historic data center to a cloud environment aligned with our transformation strategy. This enables smarter use of data, massive analytics, and advanced AI capabilities based on Microsoft technology. The level of coordination and professionalism across all teams and partners, including ALIANDO, has been exemplary.”

Results

✔ Modern Cloud Foundation

A fully implemented Azure Landing Zone aligned with enterprise governance, identity, security, and compliance standards.

✔ Scalable & Future‑Ready Infrastructure

Environment prepared for advanced analytics, AI, automation, and data-driven decision‑making.

✔ Optimized Operational Model

Monitoring, backups, and cost‑management practices reduced overhead and increased reliability.

✔ Minimal Business Disruption

Migration completed with exceptional team coordination, achieving a “no noise” transition.

✔ Strong Partnership & Collaboration

The project was highlighted internally as an example of cross‑team excellence and professional execution.

Conclusion

Through ALIANDO’s structured migration methodology — from strategy and assessment to iterative migration waves and post‑migration optimization — OHLA successfully modernized a 20‑year-old data center and aligned its technology with its long-term digital transformation strategy. The new Azure environment now enables smarter data usage, AI innovation, and large-scale analytics, setting the foundation for continued modernization.