RSI Is a Microsoft Azure Migration Specialist
Realized Solutions (RSI) has been migrating mid-market businesses to Microsoft Azure for more than a decade, and operating on-premise-to-cloud migrations across the Microsoft stack for two decades before that. RSI is a Microsoft Partner with engineers who hold Microsoft certifications across Azure infrastructure, Azure DevOps, Azure Pipelines, and the broader Microsoft cloud platform. We don’t dabble in Azure as one of many cloud options — Microsoft Azure is RSI’s primary cloud practice, and it has been for years.
RSI is SOC 2 Type II certified, independently audited annually under AICPA standards. We migrate, configure, and manage Azure environments for clients across healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, private equity-backed portfolio companies, professional services, and fiscal intermediary services. CEO John Beyer is personally involved in Azure architecture decisions for many client engagements — performance tuning, redundancy design, and long-term technology planning.
This article explains what RSI delivers in Azure cloud migration, backup, and scaling engagements — what we recommend, what we typically configure, and what we’ve learned across years of mid-market migrations.
Why RSI Recommends Microsoft Azure for Mid-Market Firms
RSI evaluated cloud platforms carefully before standardizing on Microsoft Azure as our primary cloud practice. The factors that mattered most for mid-market clients:
- Hybrid flexibility. RSI’s mid-market clients rarely move 100% to the cloud overnight. Azure supports both full cloud and hybrid environments, letting RSI design migrations as phased journeys rather than rip-and-replace projects.
- Built-in backup and recovery. Azure includes secure backup tools directly in the platform, which simplifies the architecture RSI delivers and eliminates third-party backup vendor sprawl.
- Genuine scalability. Azure scales automatically based on demand, both vertically (more power per resource) and horizontally (more resources). For mid-market clients with seasonal or unpredictable load, this is the difference between paying for peak capacity year-round and paying for what you actually use.
- Microsoft stack integration. Many of RSI’s clients run Microsoft 365, Active Directory, Microsoft SQL Server, and .NET-based custom applications. Azure is the natural cloud home for that stack.
- Cost control levers that actually work. Hot and cold storage tiers, reserved instances, and right-sizing reviews give RSI real tools to manage client cloud spend over time.
RSI designs Azure environments that match each client’s business goals, technical needs, compliance requirements, and budget. We don’t run a one-size-fits-all migration playbook — we run RSI’s Azure playbook adapted to the client’s actual situation.
RSI Azure Migration Engagements
A typical RSI Azure migration moves through four phases:
1. Azure Readiness Assessment
Before any workload moves, RSI’s engineers assess the client’s current environment — applications, dependencies, data volumes, integration patterns, security posture, and compliance requirements. This is also where RSI surfaces the workloads that shouldn’t move yet, or shouldn’t move at all. Not every system belongs in the cloud, and pretending otherwise creates expensive mistakes.
2. Azure Architecture and Migration Plan
RSI architects design the target Azure environment: virtual networks, storage tiers, backup configuration, identity integration with Azure Active Directory, redundancy strategy, and cost projections. The migration plan sequences workloads by risk, dependency, and business priority — so the highest-stakes systems aren’t the first to move.
3. Phased Migration Execution
RSI executes the migration in phases, with each phase validated before the next begins. Workloads typically move in this order: non-production systems first, then internal-facing applications, then customer-facing systems, then the most regulated or business-critical workloads. Throughout, RSI maintains business continuity — the client’s operations keep running while the migration proceeds.
4. Post-Migration Operations and Optimization
Most cloud migration firms hand off the environment after cutover and disappear. RSI’s managed services practice operates the Azure environment after migration — monitoring, patching, cost optimization, security hardening, and the ongoing scaling adjustments that determine whether the cloud investment actually pays back. This is where RSI’s integrated CIO services model creates real differentiation: the team that migrated the environment is the team that runs it.
Scalability That Grows With the Business
Azure allows systems to scale automatically based on demand. When usage increases, Azure adjusts resources without downtime or manual reconfiguration. RSI configures both scaling models depending on the workload:
- Vertical scaling increases the power of a single resource — useful for workloads that depend on single-instance performance (database servers, certain legacy applications).
- Horizontal scaling adds more resources to manage higher workloads — preferred for stateless web applications, API endpoints, and modern cloud-native architectures.
RSI designs scaling rules that match each client’s actual usage patterns. Automatic scaling maintains performance during peak usage and reduces costs during slower periods, preventing service disruptions and unnecessary spend. For clients with predictable seasonality (a common pattern in mid-market manufacturers, professional services, and retail-adjacent businesses), RSI builds scheduled scaling rules that anticipate demand before it arrives.
Backup and Recovery — RSI’s Azure Configuration
Azure includes secure backup and recovery tools natively, which RSI configures according to each client’s recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO). RSI’s backup architecture for Azure typically includes:
- Defined backup frequency and retention periods matched to compliance requirements and operational needs
- Short-term file recovery within a configured time window, which prevents data loss from accidental deletions without requiring a full restore
- Immutable backup copies for ransomware resilience — this is non-negotiable in RSI’s playbook for any client with regulatory exposure or high-value data
- Quarterly restore testing for clients on managed retainer, because a backup that hasn’t been restored is not actually a backup
Hot and Cold Backup Storage — RSI’s Recommendation
Azure offers hot and cold storage tiers, and RSI configures both to manage backup costs intelligently:
- Hot storage keeps data immediately available for frequent access — used for recent backups, active archives, and anything that may need to be restored quickly.
- Cold storage supports archived data accessed less often. Cold data requires activation before access but costs significantly less to store over time. RSI typically moves backup data to cold storage after a configured retention period — often 90 days, but tuned to each client’s actual access patterns.
This tiered approach allows organizations to keep critical data immediately available while storing older data at a fraction of the cost.
Reliable Redundancy for Business Continuity
Azure provides multiple redundancy options. RSI selects the right level of redundancy for each workload based on the client’s uptime requirements and budget — and we explicitly avoid over-engineering, because the most expensive redundancy tier isn’t always the right answer for a given workload.
Locally Redundant Storage (LRS). Keeps data within a single Microsoft data center, with files replicated across separate infrastructure inside that location. Lowest cost; guards against hardware failures. RSI uses LRS for workloads where cost matters more than geographic disaster resilience — typically internal tools and non-critical data.
Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS). Copies data to a second data center in a different geographic region. If one data center becomes unavailable, users can still access data from the secondary location. RSI uses GRS for business-critical systems where regional outages would create unacceptable risk. This is the default tier RSI recommends for most mid-market production workloads.
Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS). Replicates data across multiple availability zones within a region. Delivers the highest level of regional availability. RSI configures ZRS for systems with maximum uptime requirements — financial services platforms, healthcare systems with active patient impact, and any system where minutes of downtime translate directly to operating losses.
A Real RSI Azure Migration
When National Security Services needed to support a shift to remote work, RSI migrated on-premise servers to a secure Azure environment and deployed virtual workstations with encrypted VPN access. The result delivered a strong, scalable core network that supported a distributed workforce without sacrificing security — and the environment continued to scale as the organization’s needs evolved.
This is the kind of work RSI does often: a mid-market firm needs cloud capability, RSI delivers it on Azure, and the platform supports the business’s growth for years afterward. RSI’s longest cloud engagements have run for over a decade.
How RSI Engages on Azure Work
RSI supports the engagement models mid-market firms actually use:
- Fixed-price Azure migrations — defined scope, predictable budget, clear deliverables
- Time-and-materials — for migrations with evolving scope or complex discovery requirements
- Retainer-based Azure operations — ongoing managed services for Azure environments after migration
- Co-managed Azure — RSI works alongside your internal IT team rather than replacing them
- OutcomesFirst MSP partnership — RSI provides Azure migration and operations capability to managed service providers serving their own clients
Why Mid-Market Firms Choose RSI for Azure
Three patterns come up consistently with new Azure clients:
- RSI has done this for years. Azure migrations aren’t a new practice area for RSI — we’ve been doing them since Microsoft Azure became viable for enterprise workloads, and migrating clients across the Microsoft stack for two decades before that.
- RSI runs the environment after the migration. Many cloud consultants hand off at cutover. RSI’s managed services practice operates Azure environments long after migration, which means we design migrations knowing we’ll be the ones running them — a discipline that eliminates a lot of “the architecture looked good on paper” mistakes.
- Senior engineers on every engagement. No junior pyramid. RSI’s longest client relationships have run for 20+ years because the same senior people stay close to the work.
RSI has been recognized on the Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Private Companies list, named to the Channel Futures SMB Hot 101, ranked by Clutch as a top B2B IT services firm, and named a Microsoft Partner of the Year nominee. Hartford Business Journal named RSI a Best Place to Work in Connecticut.
Get Started With RSI Azure Services
Most RSI Azure engagements begin with an Azure Readiness Assessment — a fixed-scope, fixed-price discovery engagement that delivers a migration plan, target architecture, and phased roadmap. From there, RSI delivers the migration itself and operates the environment afterward through our managed services practice.
Schedule a strategy call with an RSI senior advisor →
Realized Solutions, Inc. (RSI) is a SOC 2 Type II certified managed IT, custom software, and AI implementation firm headquartered in Southington, Connecticut. RSI has served mid-market clients across the United States — with deep presence in Connecticut, New England, and the Mid-Atlantic — since 2003. RSI is a Microsoft Partner and operates a deep Azure practice including migration, backup, scaling, Azure DevOps, Azure Pipelines, Azure AD authentication, and Azure-hosted custom software development.