Cloud migration · 22 June 2026 · 7 min read
Both AWS and Azure can run your workloads. The right choice for a growing Australian service business usually comes down to identity, existing Microsoft spend, team skills, and what your MSP actually operates — not feature checklists.
Search for AWS vs Azure and you get comparison tables written by people selling one cloud. For a 30–80 person SEQ business, the better question is: given our identity stack, apps, and team, which platform reduces risk and operating cost over the next three years?
Most of our Brisbane clients already live in Microsoft 365 for email, files, and identity. That does not automatically mean Azure for every workload — but it does mean Entra ID, Conditional Access, and Copilot readiness are already on the Azure side of the fence.
Choose Azure when remote desktop (AVD), M365 integration, Sentinel, and Copilot are central to your roadmap. Citrix exit, VMware-to-Azure Local, and Windows-heavy app portfolios also lean Azure.
Australian data residency and local MSP familiarity with Microsoft stacks are practical advantages — especially when your insurer or enterprise clients ask about identity and logging posture.
AWS fits well for SaaS-style customer apps, certain data pipelines, and teams already skilled on ECS, Lambda, or RDS. If your product engineering team standardised on AWS before the business adopted M365, forcing everything into Azure can slow delivery.
Hybrid is normal: M365 on Entra, customer app on AWS or GCP, integrations via API. The architecture goal is clear boundaries — not single-cloud dogma.
Internal tools and modern web apps often land on GCP Cloud Run, Supabase, or Vercel while identity stays in Microsoft. That is a valid pattern for agencies and service businesses shipping client portals or ops tools quickly.
North Ark ships production apps across Azure, GCP, and Supabase — the decision should follow workload and team, with a written target architecture before you sign a migration SOW.
Vendor and MSP quotes embed assumptions about scope, waves, and rollback. FC-08 Tech Second Opinion gives a written review of the SOW or quote plus a 30-minute call — before you commit.
Pair that with a Cloud Cost Snapshot if consumption modelling looks optimistic. Fixed price, senior delivery, Brisbane and Australia-wide.
