30%
Reduction in manual status calls and email escalations from shippers
Last-Mile Delivery Platform Cuts Manual Status Calls by 30% with Azure Migration
Modernized a legacy on-premise delivery platform to Azure to keep shipper-facing portals and driver apps responsive, strengthen real-time order visibility, and simplify operations for a growing last-mile logistics business.
45%
Faster roll out of driver and shipper facing features after modernizing
<4 hours
Planned production cutover window using Azure Migrate and wave-based execution
Client Overview
Industry: Logistics
Core business: Last-mile delivery platform with shipper portal and driver marketplace for same-day and on-demand deliveries
Employees: 250+
Geography: North America
Workloads migrated: Xamarin front end and .NET backend running on Windows Server VMs with SQL Server databases in a VMware environment; Windows servers and SQL databases rehosted to Azure Virtual Machines; application tier replatformed to Azure App Service and Azure Container Apps.
Challenges
A North American last-mile logistics provider runs a digital platform that connects shipper organizations with a large network of professional drivers. Shippers use a web portal to enter orders while drivers use mobile apps to select work and manage their own delivery business. As volumes grew across cities, the legacy on-prem stack struggled to keep pace with the expectations of always-on, real-time last-mile delivery.
Real-time shipper portal tied to a single data center
Order entry, pricing, GPS tracking, and proof-of-delivery updates all depended on a fixed pool of Windows Server VMs in one data center. Spikes in on-demand deliveries and driver check-ins could cause slow responses in the portal and mobile apps, pushing shippers back to phone calls and emails for basic status updates.
Legacy stack slowed evolution of the driver marketplace
The Xamarin front end and .NET backend were tightly coupled to SQL Server databases and deployed directly to long-lived VMs. Any change touching shipper workflows had to be bundled into low-frequency maintenance windows, limiting how fast the business could respond to feedback from operations and key shipper accounts.
Growth plans constrained by infrastructure lead times
The company was expanding into new metro areas and adding last-mile products, including on-demand and e-commerce, as well as white-glove home delivery. Each new city or program required fresh discussions about hardware capacity and data center timelines, making infrastructure a gating factor for commercial and partnership decisions.
Solution
Simform migrated and modernized the delivery platform on Microsoft Azure so that the digital channel could scale with shipper demand while preserving the existing application logic.
Assessment-led migration with Azure Migrate
Used Azure Migrate to discover the VMware environment, profile how the Xamarin front end, .NET services, and SQL Server databases worked together, and group them into migration waves. Lower-risk environments moved first, with a controlled production cutover in under four hours during off-peak windows.
Rehosting Windows servers and SQL databases on Azure
Windows Server virtual machines and SQL Server databases were rehosted to Azure Virtual Machines. This lifted the platform off fixed hardware without forcing a rewrite, immediately improving resilience and giving operations the ability to scale capacity in line with shipper demand rather than data center constraints.
Modernizing shipper portal and APIs on App Service
Replatformed shipper-facing portal components and APIs, and driver-facing services to Azure App Service. This provided a managed, Azure-native runtime for order entry, pricing, tracking, and proof-of-delivery flows, enabling predictable deployments and allowing teams to scale workloads independently of VMs.
Handling bursty last-mile demand with Container Apps
Backend services that experienced highly variable load were containerized and deployed to Azure Container Apps. This enabled elastic scaling during peak periods and efficient scale-back when demand softened, aligning compute consumption with the real-world rhythm of last-mile operations.
Business Impact
The Azure migration turned a hardware-bound logistics platform into a more resilient, responsive foundation for digital last-mile services.
Fewer status exceptions from shippers
Stabilizing the portal and mobile back end on Azure reduced infrastructure-related slowdowns, leading to roughly 30% fewer manual status calls and email escalations from shippers as they came to rely on real-time tracking and proof-of-delivery updates.
Faster shipper and driver experiences
By rehosting Windows and SQL workloads on Azure and modernizing services on Azure-native platforms, the company can expand into new metros and service lines without revisiting data center capacity. Teams can plan last-mile programs knowing the platform scales with demand.
Cloud foundation aligned with last-mile growth
By rehosting Windows and SQL workloads on Azure and modernizing services on Azure-native platforms, the company can grow into new metros without revisiting data center capacity. Teams can plan last-mile programs knowing the platform scales on demand.
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