Case Study: Willis Towers Watson achieves faster cloud migrations and better cost control with Microsoft Power BI

Willis Towers Watson - Customer Case Study

Willis Towers Watson, a global insurance and advisory firm, needed to manage cyclical big‑data workloads, reduce the costs of on‑premises servers, and enforce consistent cloud governance across 32 lines of business. To achieve visibility and control during its Azure migration, the company used Microsoft technologies—including Microsoft Power BI for cost and usage reporting—together with Azure governance services such as Azure Policy, Azure Cost Management, Azure Resource Manager, and planned Azure Blueprints.

By implementing Azure governance (management groups and policy presets) and feeding subscription and cost data into Microsoft Power BI, a 15‑member cloud enablement team automated guardrails, proactively managed costs, and prioritized migrations. The outcome was faster, more secure cloud adoption—eliminating the need for peak year‑round server capacity and delivering measurable progress: 25% of the company’s footprint migrated to Azure in 18 months, with deployment times expected to improve up to 35% once Azure Blueprints are in place.

Willis Towers Watson

Michael Fleming

Senior Director of Cloud Services