Impress IT Solutions says it completed a zero-downtime migration from Amazon Web Services to Microsoft Azure for an unnamed Houston construction company, moving eight business-critical applications and connecting 16 remote field sites during a five-day production cutover in late 2025.
According to the Katy, Texas-based managed service provider’s July 13 press release, the project ran from August 1 through September 4, 2025. The customer’s prior AWS deployment was replaced with a newly built Azure environment, while six AWS servers were subsequently decommissioned. The MSP said there was no planned downtime or data loss, though the claims have not been independently verified.
Impress said it built the Azure tenant alongside the live AWS estate, using Nerdio for Azure management. The new environment included Active Directory domain controllers, virtual networking and an Azure VPN Gateway.
A site-to-site VPN between AWS and Azure reportedly allowed data synchronization while systems were validated. That parallel approach is standard practice for reducing migration risk, particularly where line-of-business applications, legacy database dependencies and remote access arrangements cannot tolerate an extended maintenance window.
The application list included Oracle/SQL-backed Primavera P6, PlanSwift, ACT! CRM, Microsoft Access databases, Egnyte scanning workflows and a print server. The company also cited integrations involving Procore, Vista Viewpoint and GCPay.
For Windows administrators, the notable detail is not merely the cloud move but the dependency mix: traditional directory services, database applications, file-based Access workloads and distributed printing can make a nominally simple IaaS migration considerably more complicated than moving virtual machines.
The MSP said the production cutover occurred during early-morning maintenance windows from August 31 through September 4, 2025. Its account describes a performance problem with PlanSwift when active project files were hosted solely in the cloud. The stated fix was a hybrid design: a local NAS for active data, backed up to the cloud.
That outcome is a useful reminder that latency-sensitive file-based software may require local storage or caching even after a broader Azure migration. “Cloud-hosted” is not inherently a performance architecture, especially for large project files accessed from job sites and regional offices.
The release also says an undocumented mapped network share was discovered while shutting down an AWS server. The team reportedly recovered and preserved the data before completing decommissioning.
The unnamed construction customer now operates its migrated workloads on Azure, while the case underscores the need to inventory file shares, application storage behavior and remote-site dependencies before retiring legacy servers.
According to the Katy, Texas-based managed service provider’s July 13 press release, the project ran from August 1 through September 4, 2025. The customer’s prior AWS deployment was replaced with a newly built Azure environment, while six AWS servers were subsequently decommissioned. The MSP said there was no planned downtime or data loss, though the claims have not been independently verified.
Parallel build before cutover
Impress said it built the Azure tenant alongside the live AWS estate, using Nerdio for Azure management. The new environment included Active Directory domain controllers, virtual networking and an Azure VPN Gateway.A site-to-site VPN between AWS and Azure reportedly allowed data synchronization while systems were validated. That parallel approach is standard practice for reducing migration risk, particularly where line-of-business applications, legacy database dependencies and remote access arrangements cannot tolerate an extended maintenance window.
The application list included Oracle/SQL-backed Primavera P6, PlanSwift, ACT! CRM, Microsoft Access databases, Egnyte scanning workflows and a print server. The company also cited integrations involving Procore, Vista Viewpoint and GCPay.
For Windows administrators, the notable detail is not merely the cloud move but the dependency mix: traditional directory services, database applications, file-based Access workloads and distributed printing can make a nominally simple IaaS migration considerably more complicated than moving virtual machines.
Remote sites and access changes
The engagement also covered 16 remote construction and field locations using Cradlepoint routers, with one Deer Park site using Starlink in passthrough mode, according to Impress. Legacy VPN access was replaced with Appgate SDP, a software-defined perimeter product intended to provide identity-aware remote connectivity.The MSP said the production cutover occurred during early-morning maintenance windows from August 31 through September 4, 2025. Its account describes a performance problem with PlanSwift when active project files were hosted solely in the cloud. The stated fix was a hybrid design: a local NAS for active data, backed up to the cloud.
That outcome is a useful reminder that latency-sensitive file-based software may require local storage or caching even after a broader Azure migration. “Cloud-hosted” is not inherently a performance architecture, especially for large project files accessed from job sites and regional offices.
The release also says an undocumented mapped network share was discovered while shutting down an AWS server. The team reportedly recovered and preserved the data before completing decommissioning.
The unnamed construction customer now operates its migrated workloads on Azure, while the case underscores the need to inventory file shares, application storage behavior and remote-site dependencies before retiring legacy servers.
References
- Primary source: IndyStar
Published: 2026-07-13T06:28:05+00:00
Impress IT Solutions Completes Zero-Downtime AWS to Azure Cloud Migration for Houston Construction Firm
Katy-Based MSP Migrates 8 Business-Critical Applications and 16 Remote Sites in 5-Day Sprint — with No Disruption towww.indystar.com
