Case Study: The Walsh Group modernizes legacy applications and boosts security, reliability, and mobile access with Microsoft Azure

Construction Firm Upgrades Older Applications to Latest Operating System or the Cloud

The Walsh Group, a Chicago-based construction firm of about 5,000 employees that builds airports, highways and stadiums, faced a pressing IT challenge: roughly a dozen business applications were still running on Windows Server 2003 as support ended. That left the firm with security, reliability and management risks and prevented developers and jobsite workers from taking advantage of modern features and mobile access.

Walsh assessed each application and, within weeks, moved them to modern environments—rewriting some for Windows Server 2012 R2, virtualizing others with Microsoft App-V, and shifting select apps to Microsoft Azure—while leveraging Hyper-V, Remote Desktop Services and PowerShell. The result: faster deployment, improved performance and security, better mobile support, simpler management (including Active Directory recovery), and cost savings through more efficient virtualization and a cloud-first approach.

The Walsh Group

Patrick Wirtz

Innovation Manager