Case Study: Holmes Group achieves 400% faster fire simulations with Microsoft Corporation Azure Batch

Fire safety engineering firm ignites simulation speeds with Azure Batch

Holmes Group, a New Zealand engineering firm, faced slow and costly fire dynamics simulations that limited how many design iterations its Holmes Fire subsidiary could run. Using Microsoft Azure and Azure Batch, the team needed a scalable, consistent way to speed up high-performance computing jobs and improve fire safety analysis.

Microsoft Corporation, working with partner Theta, implemented an Azure-based solution using Azure App Service, Azure Active Directory, Azure Blob Storage, and Azure Batch to automate uploads, notifications, and on-demand HPC processing. The results were dramatic: one simulation that previously took 336 hours ran in just 56 hours in Azure, delivering more than a 400% improvement in turnaround and enabling faster collaboration, lower costs, and more simulation runs.

Holmes Group

Sam Mulholland

Chief Information Officer