Transform your legacy infrastructure into a modern, agile environment ready for AI and analytics. Many industrial enterprises are held back by outdated IT systems (aging databases, on-premise ERPs) and legacy OT setups that were never designed for today’s data-driven needs. Our Infrastructure Modernization solution tackles this by migrating critical systems to the cloud, integrating siloed data sources, and upgrading legacy technology so your operations can fully leverage digital tools.
Legacy System Challenges
In many organizations, vital operational data is trapped in old software and hardware. For example, a manufacturing company might have an on-premises ERP or data historian that doesn’t interface with new IoT systems, meaning production data and enterprise data remain isolated. This was the case for one utility whose operational data sat in an old SAP system, making it difficult to integrate with modern analytics or sensor data. Legacy systems also face performance and scalability limits – reports run slowly, and it’s often impossible to handle real-time data or large analytics workloads on outdated infrastructure. Additionally, maintaining complex, multi-layer legacy workflows (e.g. chains of ETL jobs feeding old reporting tools) becomes a burden, slowing down any digital innovation. In short, without modernization, organizations struggle to implement predictive models, unified dashboards, or any advanced analytics because the foundation isn’t there.
Our Modernization Approach
We provide end-to-end modernization, typically starting with a cloud migration strategy. We identify key systems (data warehouses, reporting platforms, SCADA historians, etc.) that would benefit from the cloud’s scalability and flexibility. Then, using robust tools and careful planning, we migrate data and business logic to modern cloud platforms. In a recent project, we migrated an entire SAP operational reporting environment (including SAP Business Warehouse and BusinessObjects reports) to Microsoft Azure cloud. We utilized specialized extractors and ETL tools to pull data out of SAP and rebuild the data warehouse in the cloud with minimal disruption. All the reporting logic (queries, KPIs) was re-implemented using cloud analytics tools (such as Azure SQL/Synapse and Power BI), ensuring continuity of business intelligence while eliminating the legacy layers.
Simultaneously, we focus on data integration and architecture redesign. We break down data silos by creating a unified cloud data lake or warehouse that brings together previously disconnected data streams. Industrial IoT data from sensors or SCADA systems can be combined with enterprise databases in one platform. The outcome is a single, scalable source of truth where advanced analytics can run. As highlighted in our utility case, replacing siloed on-prem systems with a cloud platform effectively digitized the core operations data pipeline and created a unified foundation for smart analytics. We also often modernize the SCADA/OT side in parallel: for example, enabling SCADA historians to stream data to the cloud, or implementing IoT gateways for older equipment. This holistic approach ensures that both IT and OT systems evolve together into an integrated, cloud-ready architecture.
Throughout the process, we manage change carefully to avoid business disruptions. Legacy and new systems can run in parallel during transition, and data consistency is verified at each step. We also address security and compliance by configuring cloud environments with proper access controls and fail-safes (often improving security compared to aging on-prem servers).
Results and Benefits
Modernizing infrastructure yields both immediate and strategic benefits. First, data integration: formerly isolated data and systems become connected. For example, after migrating to our unified cloud platform, a utility’s leadership could – for the first time – see operational KPIs and financial data side by side on a single dashboard, because the SAP and IoT data were now in one place. This enterprise-wide visibility leads to better decision making; managers are no longer “blind” to field operations, and operators can access business context for their decisions. Second, enablement of advanced analytics: a modern, cloud-based architecture is essentially a prerequisite for AI at scale. In the case above, once the data was in the cloud, the utility could start applying machine learning to predict maintenance needs and optimize operations – tasks that were impractical with the old setup. We see that cloud migration accelerates digital innovation: new analytics models, reports, and integrations can be developed and deployed much faster (in days rather than weeks) because the data is accessible and the environment is flexible.
Another benefit is performance and scalability. Reports that used to take hours on legacy systems can run in seconds or minutes on a modern cloud database. Users can query and analyze data without crashing systems. And as your business grows (more assets, sensors, and transactions), the cloud infrastructure scales on-demand without large capital investments in hardware. Maintenance of the systems becomes easier too – no more dealing with aging servers or outdated software patches; cloud services are automatically kept up-to-date, freeing your IT team from heavy upkeep.
Use Case: Enterprise Cloud Migration & OT/IT Convergence
A large utility company partnered with us to modernize its data infrastructure as part of a digital transformation. They had a complex on-premises SAP system handling operational data and reports, and separately, thousands of sensor data points from SCADA systems that were not being fully utilized. We helped migrate all SAP business logic (data warehouse and reporting layers) to a cloud-based analytics stack. Using Azure cloud tools, we set up automated pipelines that pull data from operational systems (like SAP and the SCADA historian) into a unified cloud data lake in near real-time. Once in the cloud, this integrated dataset allowed the utility to develop new capabilities: for instance, they built AI models to predict pipeline leakage risk by correlating pressure sensor trends with maintenance records – something previously impossible when SCADA and SAP data were separate. After migration, the utility’s management noted a remarkable improvement in agility: generating a system-wide performance report used to be a tedious process involving multiple legacy tools; now they have interactive dashboards that refresh automatically with live data. The IT team found that changes which once took weeks (e.g. modifying a data schema or adding a new data source) could be done in days, thanks to the flexibility of cloud services. This modernization was executed with careful planning to avoid disruption – legacy and new systems ran in parallel until cutover, and data consistency was validated at each step. In the end, the company gained a future-proof foundation for AI and IoT: by consolidating outdated systems into a cloud platform and converging OT/IT data, they unlocked capabilities like predictive analytics on their combined data and improved operational efficiency across the board.
Through infrastructure modernization, we prepare your organization for the future. By adopting cloud and modern integration, you gain a platform for AI, IoT, and scalability that will serve you for the next decade and beyond. Whether it’s migrating legacy enterprise software to the cloud or upgrading the digital infrastructure of a power plant, we ensure the transition is smooth and delivers tangible improvements in insight, agility, and cost efficiency.