From a private cloud to a platform for further growth
Visma Circle is developing Djuma, a SaaS platform for case-based work. The platform supports organizations with tasks such as intake, workflows, content creation, and information management.
To enable further growth, Visma Circle wanted to modernize the applications from its existing private cloud environment and migrate them to Microsoft Azure.
Five key principles were central to this approach: scalability, reliability, cost-efficiency, greater autonomy for development teams, and a platform team that will ultimately be able to develop and manage the Azure infrastructure independently.
The cloud transformation was therefore not simply a matter of moving infrastructure.
The new platform was intended to serve as a foundation on which Visma Circle could continue to develop more quickly.
Understand first, then migrate
A successful cloud migration doesn't start with moving workloads.
That is why a Solution Assessment was first conducted in collaboration with Microsoft. The existing workloads, infrastructure, databases, and application code were analyzed to determine the best path to Azure for each component.
Among other things, the assessment considered the desired architecture, expected costs, and potential technical risks.
For application components where potential bottlenecks were identified, proof-of-concepts were first built and tested in Azure.
This made it possible to address risks before the actual migration began.
An Azure foundation as a new starting point
After the assessment, the first step was to build the cloud foundation on which Visma Circle's applications could be deployed.
The environment was set up according to principles from the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework and the Enterprise Scale Landing Zone Framework. This resulted in a standardized Azure foundation that incorporated security, scalability, availability, and governance from the very beginning.
Consequently, not every new workload requires the same fundamental decisions to be made all over again.
Development teams build on a platform where the key technical frameworks are already in place.
From Manual Management to Infrastructure as Code
The infrastructure is managed using Terraform.
Infrastructure as Code makes the configuration of the environment reproducible and versionable. This allows infrastructure to be deployed consistently, and changes are easier to manage.
This offers Visma Circle several benefits:
- Infrastructure can be deployed and updated automatically;
- environments are structured more consistently;
- the risk of human error decreases;
- Scaling up and down will become easier;
- Management requires less operational effort;
- The infrastructure remains less dependent on any one specific cloud provider.
Terraform thus not only supports the technical transformation, but also gives Visma Circle more control over how the platform evolves.
Compliance is a standard feature of the platform
For many Visma Circle customers, BIO and ISO 27001 are important requirements.
Checking compliance after the fact would therefore add unnecessary complexity. Instead, relevant policies are incorporated directly into the platform’s technical building blocks.
Development teams then work with pre-approved components and within established guidelines.
As a result, compliance shifts from a post-hoc audit to an inherent characteristic of the infrastructure itself.
Teams are given the freedom to build independently, while the platform team maintains control over security, governance, and costs.
Freedom for developers, control for the platform team
One of Visma Circle's key goals was to enable development teams to independently develop and test new functionality.
That is why the new foundation provides space for sandbox environments where teams can build their own solutions. However, that freedom remains within the policies and guidelines established by the platform team.
That changes the role of the platform team.
Instead of having to build infrastructure separately for each team, the platform team provides a standardized cloud foundation that developers can use to continue their work independently.
This creates greater speed without relinquishing control.
Knowledge Transfer as Part of the Transformation
Visma Circle ultimately wanted to be able to manage the new Azure environment on its own.
For that reason, the decision was made not to pursue an approach in which an external party would build the platform and then hand it over. Engineers from Visma Circle and CloudNation worked together as a single DevOps team.
The cloud transformation thus became a learning journey as well.
By jointly designing the architecture, evaluating workloads, and building the foundation, the internal team develops the knowledge needed to continue managing and further developing the platform on its own.
From Managing Infrastructure to Delivering Business Value
The next step is to further modernize Djuma using as many Azure-native services as possible.
The following principle applies: SaaS before PaaS before IaaS.
By using managed SaaS and PaaS services whenever possible, Visma Circle has to maintain less of the underlying infrastructure itself.
This gives the team more leeway to focus on the software and services that truly set it apart. At the same time, the platform benefits from automatic scalability, greater operational efficiency, and an infrastructure that can better adapt to changing demand.
The result: a cloud platform that enables growth
With the new Azure foundation, Visma Circle is laying the technical groundwork for the further development of Djuma.
The organization will receive:
- a scalable and standardized Azure environment;
- Infrastructure as Code with Terraform;
- BIO and ISO 27001 guidelines incorporated into the platform architecture;
- more autonomy for development teams;
- less manual infrastructure management;
- an internal platform team that is increasingly able to manage itself;
- a foundation for further application modernization using Azure-native services.
The most significant change, therefore, is not just the shift from a private cloud to a public cloud.
Visma Circle is building a platform that allows development teams to accelerate their work independently, while security, compliance, and governance remain integral to the technical foundation.
In this way, the cloud becomes not just a new place to run Djuma, but a foundation for continuing to develop more quickly and enabling further growth.
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