Co-op Group is truly unique. For over 150 years, this British retail group has served customers and communities while upholding values like equality, solidarity, and concern for communities. Owned by its members rather than shareholders, Co-op is committed to conducting business in a better and fairer way by giving back to its members and using its profits to support the communities it serves.
This approach has proven successful. Co-op has grown into one of the largest food retailers in the United Kingdom, boasting over 2,500 locations. It is also a leading provider of funeral services, a significant player in the general insurance industry, and an emerging legal services provider. However, years of expansion resulted in a highly complex and heterogeneous digital infrastructure that was challenging to manage. To continue delivering value to its customers and communities, Co-op decided to streamline its IT infrastructure and enhance management and control with the Microsoft Cloud and Azure Stack HCI.
Our Azure Stack HCI deployment has delivered a savings of roughly £400,000 a year on power and cooling alone compared with the C7000 blades we were running.
Scott Robertson: Principal Enterprise Architect for Foundation Technology
Co-op Group
A patchwork in progress
Years of organic growth, mergers, acquisitions, and various application developments left Co-op with a diverse digital architecture spread across two data centers. This technology sprawl created visibility and management challenges, requiring Co-op to retain skill sets across multiple platforms, databases, and operating systems, necessitating comprehensive management. "We’ve got a varied infrastructure footprint, which made a cloud migration challenging because we’ve got applications tied to specific operating systems or database platforms that hadn’t ever been certified to run on a public cloud platform," recalls Scott Robertson, Principal Enterprise Architect for Foundation Technology at Co-op Group.
Although Co-op had a general cloud-first strategy, it needed to maintain on-premises infrastructure due to some older applications not being cloud-certified and other key applications having latency requirements. Taking a thoughtful and hybrid migration approach, the company started its cloud journey with a supply chain transformation for SAP in its retail business, opting to run it on Azure. Using Azure for its SAP workloads allowed Co-op to remove infrastructure from the critical path for delivery, achieving an impressive deployment time. "Azure infrastructure saved us close to nine months in delivery time for our new SAP implementation compared with a traditional datacenter-hosted infrastructure," says Robertson. Additionally, since SAP was brand new, Co-op could quickly and easily meet the new and increased infrastructure requirements. "The dynamic nature of Azure infrastructure was well suited to the unknown sizing and performance requirements of our new SAP platform," adds Robertson.
The SAP on Azure implementation introduced the company to Microsoft's deep expertise through its product development and engineering teams, which worked onsite to help resolve pressing infrastructure challenges. Building on this momentum, Co-op adopted a hybrid infrastructure approach to harmonize its on-premises and cloud support models, with Azure Stack HCI playing a key role in the plan. Co-op began by engaging a client architect from SCC to explore infrastructure options. This led to collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, selecting HP as the provider due to the strong relationship, internal skills, and positive past experiences with HP hardware and support.
Simplified architecture, optimized results
Co-op’s Azure Stack HCI environment comprises four clusters—two for general purposes and two for databases—with three nodes in each cluster. The company manages around 2,000 instances of Windows Server across its physical and Hyper-V estates, with nearly all current virtual workloads migrated to Azure Stack HCI.
Since most of Co-op’s workloads on Azure Stack HCI are Azure Arc–enabled, the company can integrate valuable Azure services into its HCI environment. For instance, Co-op utilizes Azure Policy, Azure Firewall, and Microsoft Sentinel to secure its environments. The company is also assessing how Azure Monitor's visibility and troubleshooting capabilities could enhance its existing tools and streamline consolidation efforts. Additionally, Co-op is exploring further utilization of Azure Arc to improve platform visibility and management across both cloud and on-premises environments.
For data analysis, Co-op leverages Azure Synapse Analytics as its data platform and Power BI for analytics and insights. The company employs Dynamics 365 and Power Apps to transform its funeral care business and support a larger data-mastering initiative across Co-op. The move to Azure Synapse Analytics aims to achieve higher-quality data, mastered in the right place, to enhance decision-making processes and integrate data with technology. Lastly, Co-op is exploring Azure solutions for containerization and managed database services as part of its ongoing infrastructure transformation and is in the process of implementing Azure-native Azure Virtual Desktop company-wide.
From consolidation comes flexibility
Co-op’s transition to Azure Stack HCI has been a significant achievement for the retailer. By shifting from a traditional three-tier architecture to a hyperconverged one, the company gains the flexibility and scalability of the cloud while retaining the option to keep workloads on-premises as needed. This migration extended support and security for long-running operating systems and brought performance improvements. "So far, we’ve seen around a 30 percent performance improvement with Azure Stack HCI compared to our previous Hyper-V based workloads," says Robertson.
This new hybrid approach has provided Co-op with greater flexibility. The company can now run hybrid workloads more effectively, such as primarily deploying on-premises while using Azure for disaster recovery, or deploying on-premises and bursting to Azure to manage peak loads or high consumption periods.
The simplification and resilience of the new infrastructure have led to fewer outages and better employee experiences. With unified management across its hybrid environment and the added protection of tools like Azure Monitor and Microsoft Sentinel, Co-op has minimized the potential for incidents and outages, ensuring that stores remain stocked. Additionally, the IT teams now spend less time troubleshooting and more time on optimization and innovation. "With Azure Stack HCI and a simplified architecture, we’re enabling our staff to do their jobs better," says Robertson. "They’re free to use their creativity to improve and innovate instead of having to spend time troubleshooting."
With Azure Stack HCI and a simplified architecture, we’re enabling our staff to do their jobs better. They’re free to use their creativity to improve and innovate instead of having to spend time troubleshooting.
Scott Robertson: Principal Enterprise Architect for Foundation Technology
Co-op Group
More power gained, less power used
One of the greatest advantages of Co-op’s Azure Stack HCI implementation is its contribution to the company’s sustainability goals and support for its core values. The migration has reduced Co-op’s data center footprint from 16 racks to just 4, leading to a substantial decrease in power consumption.
“Our Azure Stack HCI deployment has resulted in savings of approximately £400,000 annually on power and cooling compared to the C7000 blades we previously used,” says Robertson. By opting for greater consistency and simplicity in its infrastructure, while enhancing outcomes for its people and communities, Co-op continues to honor its heritage and lead into the future.
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