Case Study: Astellas Pharma achieves faster global datacenter closure with Microsoft Azure

Drug company standardizes global operations by integrating its ERP systems in the cloud

Astellas Pharma, the Japanese pharmaceutical company, needed to migrate major workloads to the cloud but faced several “big rocks,” including a 500-terabyte local file share that couldn’t be easily lifted and shifted. The company turned to Microsoft Azure, using Azure Data Box and native Azure migration tools as part of its move to modern infrastructure.

Microsoft Azure helped Astellas Pharma complete the migration in just six months, far faster than the two years the team expected, and enabled the closure of six datacenters worldwide. About 300 servers were migrated, with improved performance, scalability, security, and a path to further optimization and cloud-native adoption; Astellas also reported significant cost savings and a seamless business experience.

Astellas Pharma

Akihiro Shiotani

IT Infrastructure Group, Information Systems Department