Azure Migration & Application Refactor – Empower

Business Need
Empower (Össur) turned to Affirma for help moving a critical business application from their on-premises data center to Microsoft Azure. This migration was a key strategic initiative, aimed at improving system reliability, boosting performance, and reducing the burden of managing infrastructure.

Additionally, Empower needed to meet strict HITRUST compliance standards. The new infrastructure had to be designed with features that would support these requirements after the migration.

What We Did
Affirma led a complete migration and modernization of Empower’s application and its supporting systems. Our work included:

• Evaluating Azure services and designing the Azure architecture

• Deploying Azure environments for Production, UAT (User Acceptance Testing), and Testing

• Refactoring the application and database to use Azure Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions

• Migrating data and services to the new Azure environment

• Cutting over from the old on-premises system and decommissioning legacy infrastructure

Results
Empower’s migration to Azure was a success, with several key outcomes:

• Cloud modernization: Application and database were refactored to use Azure SQL Managed Instance and Azure App Services, replacing the legacy server-based infrastructure.

• Seamless transition: Affirma managed the full migration and provided post-migration support to minimize disruption for end users.

• Enhanced security and management:

  • Implemented Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF)

  • Integrated key logging functions with Azure Log Analytics for improved visibility into security and performance

• Compliance alignment:

  • Tuned security settings to meet HITRUST compliance requirements

  • Developed custom Log Analytics queries for easier access to important log data