Maersk Migrates 500 SAP Servers to Microsoft Azure with Near-Zero Downtime

Global container shipping company Maersk has migrated its core SAP landscape to Microsoft Azure, to reduce infrastructure costs, improve resilience, and enable future innovation, Microsoft said. The company replatformed 500 SAP servers from legacy data center environments to Azure, with near 100 percent uptime and zero incidents, over a period of just three weeks.

Legacy Complexity and Cost Pressure of Global Logistics at Scale

Maersk operates one of the world’s largest integrated logistics networks, managing complex global supply chains that depend on highly available, data-intensive SAP systems.

Roman Kulczykowski, senior director, SAP Technology Platform and Platform Architecture, Maersk, said, “Our industry faces daily volatility—geopolitical, economic, and regulatory—which disrupts sourcing strategies and customer planning. Adding to this complexity is the data fragmentation across our partners and systems—a concern when every shipping transaction requires successful completion of the invoice before it moves on.”

The company faced increasing technical debt from legacy infrastructure, alongside rising operational costs and the need to maintain uptime for mission-critical logistics systems. Managing large-scale SAP environments across traditional data centers also limited agility and slowed innovation.

Need for Agility and Control

Maersk set out to upgrade its SAP ERP core without disrupting the thousands of live transactions that run its day-to-day operations.

Tony Clarke, senior engineering manager, SAP Technology Platform and Platform Architecture, Maersk, said, “We pride ourselves on our customer service—making new growth opportunities accessible to businesses of all sizes, all over the world. We do this by providing real-time information on our shipments, predictive analytics, and data insights, and that all takes a huge amount of data and data performance.”

Maersk approached the initiative as a broader infrastructure transformation rather than a lift-and-shift migration. The move to Azure was driven by the need to simplify operations, reduce reliance on third-party vendors, and give internal teams greater control over SAP environments.

Using Azure Blueprints as a governance tool and standardized deployment models, the company accelerated provisioning and reduced complexity, enabling faster and more consistent infrastructure deployment.

Speed, Stability, and Cost Efficiency

Post-migration, Maersk achieved near 100% uptime with zero incidents while significantly reducing infrastructure complexity.

“This wasn’t about unlocking new features,” Kulczykowski explained. “It was about remediating technical debt and reducing costs by using Azure. Every dollar saved from maintaining heritage systems is a dollar we can invest in innovation and customer-facing assets.”

The transition also improved security by replacing outdated systems with a more modern, Secure by Design architecture, strengthening compliance and resilience across its SAP estate. This shift meant Maersk’s own engineers could make changes directly, shorten decision cycles, and deploy improvements faster without relying on external partners.

With a modern SAP foundation on Azure, Maersk is better positioned to scale advanced analytics, automation, and AI-driven use cases, Clarke, said. The transformation supports real-time data processing, improved shipment visibility, and continued innovation in global logistics operations.

Building a Foundation for AI-Driven Logistics

The SAP-on-Azure modernization is part of Maersk’s broader digital transformation strategy, where cloud infrastructure serves as a foundation for advanced analytics, automation, and AI.

Maersk relies on real-time data, predictive analytics, and digital platforms to optimize global supply chains, improve shipment visibility, and enhance customer experience.

Maersk is also integrating Azure OpenAI in Foundry models with its SAP environment to support internal teams and improve service delivery. “We’re enabling our teams to ask SAP questions in natural language, such as ‘Where is my invoice? Has it been approved? Where is my container?’” Clarke said. The company is using AI to pull, enrich, and analyze data across systems, marking an early step toward more intelligent, data-driven operations.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

Cloud migration is now about operational control, not hosting. Enterprises are increasingly using hyperscalers like Microsoft Azure to take direct ownership of SAP environments, reducing reliance on third parties while enabling faster decision-making and tighter alignment between IT and business priorities.

Speed and execution are emerging as key differentiators. Maersk’s rapid migration with zero incidents demonstrates how structured governance, prebuilt deployment models, and internal engineering capability can significantly compress timelines without introducing operational risk.

Cost savings are funding the next wave of innovation. By retiring legacy infrastructure and reducing technical debt, organizations can redirect spend toward higher-value initiatives such as AI, advanced analytics, and customer-facing digital capabilities built on modern SAP platforms.