For nearly two decades, the firm had relied on legacy, on-premises data centers to power its operations. But with aging hardware approaching end-of-support and a growing global workforce, it became clear that modernization was no longer optional, it was urgent.

The firm signed a significant contract with CrucialLogics to migrate its data center into Microsoft Azure. Just days later, the urgency intensified after the firm suffered a security breach that brought operations to a complete standstill. The company could no longer process clients, and what began as a planned modernization quickly became a critical recovery effort.

With a lean IT team of just two people, the firm had long outsourced its technology management to stay focused on its core business, international tax law. Prior to engagement, the entire infrastructure was on-premise, spread across multiple data centers in the UK and Thailand. Services frequently failed, and North American staff struggled to reach support across time zones. While some foundational Microsoft technologies were in place, critical security best practices such as zero trust networking and cloud-based services were absent.

The breach compounded these challenges. The business was entirely offline, unable to serve clients, and facing aggressive timelines to recover. Historically, IT had been viewed as a cost center rather than a strategic investment, which meant budgets were tight and internal buy-in was limited. Previous attempts to address collaboration and file-sharing needs through tools like NextCloud and Secure FTP had fallen short, leaving the firm without a reliable, scalable solution.

• Business continuity restored: After a major a disruption, due to the breach, the firm was back up and running with a modernized, cloud-based infrastructure, enabling them to resume client operations.
• Global accessibility improved: Staff across North America, the UK, and Asia-Pacific now access the same tools and services in the high-availability cloud, with local regional access eliminating the latency, downtime, and support gaps caused by geography-dependent data centers.
• Security posture strengthened: The move from legacy on-premises systems to Azure and M365 replaced outdated practices with a modern, cloud-first security foundation, a critical shift following the breach.
• Scalable foundation for growth: With Azure App Service and Azure SQL Managed Instance in place, the firm now has a flexible, scalable platform that supports its operations as a growing international business.