UCC Coffee moves server estate to Azure in hybrid shift

Interactive has migrated UCC Coffee's on-premises server environment to Microsoft Azure, extending the companies' partnership in Australia and New Zealand.

UCC Coffee undertook the shift as part of a broader reset of ageing infrastructure nearing the end of its support cycle. Rising costs in its on-premises private cloud environment also prompted a review of how its systems were hosted.

Instead of moving all systems to a single platform, the companies adopted a hybrid model. Key front-end workloads were transferred to Microsoft Azure, while heavier back-end systems remained on private cloud.

The approach was intended to avoid disruption in a business where operational continuity is closely tied to daily supply. UCC Coffee supplies cafés, convenience stores, quick-service restaurants and offices across Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

Greg Wratt, IT Manager ANZ at UCC Coffee, said the stakes were high during the migration.

"If our system was to go down, the business goes down... and it's $1,000,000 a day if it goes down," Wratt said.

Interactive handled the migration from planning through execution, including prebuilding servers and scheduling overnight cutovers so the transfer could take place without affecting day-to-day operations.

UCC Coffee said the transition was completed without interrupting supply to customers. Despite substantial changes to the underlying systems, the work was largely invisible to staff and customers.

"Downtime isn't an option in our business, and the seamlessness of the deployment and transition meant our supply to our major customers and local cafés was able to continue without interruption. It was a good sign that no one noticed anything change overnight - if anything, we were working better and faster," Wratt said.

Cost and systems

The migration also had a financial impact, with UCC Coffee estimating that moving front-end workloads to Azure reduced monthly costs by about 40%.

The wider programme also brought the company's server estate onto modern, fully supported operating systems. UCC Coffee said that work had been delayed for several years before the project was completed.

Interactive also secured Microsoft funding to cover a substantial share of migration and modernisation costs. That reduced the project's upfront burden while allowing UCC Coffee to update multiple parts of its technology environment at the same time.

Alongside the infrastructure changes, UCC Coffee introduced a new security operations function across its Australia and New Zealand environment. The company said this delivered wider benefits for the global group.

Growth support

The new setup is also intended to simplify expansion. UCC Coffee said the revised environment makes it easier to add new sites as the business grows, including arranging connectivity within hours through Interactive's team.

For a company with a lean internal IT function, outsourcing technical execution was part of the attraction. Wratt said the relationship with Interactive had become central to how the business manages technology change.

"We would be completely lost without Interactive. But the relationship is fantastic. They talk to us on a human level. They don't spit out three-letter acronyms. They tell me what it does, why I need it, then they look after it," Wratt said.

Ivan Kovacevic, Account Executive at Interactive and UCC client lead, said the work focused on reducing visible disruption while overhauling core systems behind the scenes.

"UCC Coffee came to us with a challenge. We're proud that from the outside, our work made it look like nothing changed. Internally, everything did. That's the measure of a successful migration," Kovacevic said.