Finance
Modernizing Mission-Critical Banking Data Platforms with Innovations24
Primary Area
Infrastructure & Cloud
Service Area
SQL Server Migration and Optimization
Products Used
Azure, SQL
Roles Impacted
Director Business Solutions, IT
Impact Highlight
$1m maintenace savings annually
Opportunity
A Major European Bank faced imminent end‑of‑support for a sprawling estate of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 and 2012 instances running on aging, siloed physical hardware across three European data centers, driving unacceptable security exposure and rising maintenance cost. Leadership chose to treat the sunset as a catalyst to modernize—consolidating platforms, hardening compliance posture, and enabling faster delivery of data services to business lines.
Pain Points
Unsupported / near‑EoL SQL Server versions (2008 R2, 2012) with unpatched vulnerabilities and audit exceptions.
Fragmented server sprawl: physical / lightly virtualized instances with inconsistent configuration, backups, and disaster recovery runbooks.
High licensing and maintenance spend tied to legacy hardware and per‑core overprovisioning.
Lengthy change windows and manual failover processes that slowed delivery of new analytics features and regulatory reporting updates.
Mix of legacy ETL (SQL Server Integration Services) and vendor tools plus departmental silos complicating consolidation and data quality.
Solution
Our team designed and executed a people‑process‑technology transformation that skipped in‑between SQL versions and moved prioritized workloads directly to Microsoft Azure SQL while re‑platforming regulated low‑latency workloads onto SQL Server 2022 running on a modern, fully virtualized Windows Server. The implemented processes coupled executive alignment and detailed runbooks with automated migration tooling, phased cutovers, and integrated observability.
What We Delivered
People: Cross‑functional migration factory (DBAs, InfoSec, regulatory compliance, application owners) with RACI matrices, readiness scoring, and cutover command center support.
Process: Standardized build templates, Infrastructure‑as‑Code for SQL / Windows images, automated validation scripts, blue‑green release pattern, and rollback playbooks aligned to the bank’s change‑control governance.
Technology – Data Platform: Direct migration from SQL Server 2008 R2/2012 to Azure SQL Managed Instance for lift‑and‑shift compatibility.
Technology – Hybrid / On‑Prem Modernization: Consolidated performance‑sensitive trading and payment systems onto SQL Server 2022 Enterprise with Always On Availability Groups across two primary sites; leveraged Windows Server 2022, and encrypted backups to Azure Blob.
Integration & Data Movement: Migrated legacy SSIS packages into Azure Data Factory pipelines.
Security & Compliance: Implemented Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), Always Encrypted for select PII fields, Azure Defender for SQL threat detection.
Operations & Observability: Unified monitoring with Azure Monitor, SQL insights; run‑book automation using PowerShell Desired State Configuration and Azure Automation for backups, index maintenance, and failover testing.
Impact
The bank eliminated unsupported databases, reduced attack surface, and established a governed, scalable data platform that now patches and fails over in hours instead of days while meeting stringent European regulatory SLAs. Retired end‑of‑life database servers by migrating critical databases to Azure SQL, eliminating security and compliance risks and saving over $1 Million annually in legacy maintenance costs through modernization.
Measured Results
Decommissioned legacy physical SQL hosts and consolidated to managed or virtualized targets.
Annual run‑rate savings: >$1M legacy maintenance & hardware support; ~20% reduction in SQL licensing via consolidation and right‑sizing cores.
Improved high‑availability SLA to 99.95% across Tier‑1 workloads with Always On AG + Azure Disaster Recovery; quarterly failover exercises fully automated.
Patch/upgrade cycle time cut from 6‑9 months to a rolling 30‑day compliance window using automated policy baselines.
Backup RPO improved from 8 hours average to <15 minutes for critical systems via managed backups and log shipping to Azure; RTO reduced by >60% through scripted recovery.
Unified security posture: Encryption at rest, sensitive tables covered by Always Encrypted or row‑level security policies, centralized audit evidence export reducing regulator response prep.
Retired disparate ETL stacks; SSIS packages rationalized, re‑implemented in Azure Data Factory / Synapse pipelines enabling governed data sharing for analytics.