When Datacom made the decision to decommission its virtualised private cloud infrastructure platform Comet, WineWorks faced the prospect of losing the environment it had been running its business on.
But rather than forging ahead on its own, WineWorks and Datacom worked together on a migration pathway into Microsoft Azure. Datacom also leveraged its deep Microsoft partnership to unlock funding that meant the move came at no cost to WineWorks.
WineWorks IT manager Ernie Scherf says, over a six-month consultation with Datacom, the project was planned with precision, and the transition was executed as a single, carefully timed big move that enabled the company to preserve business continuity while unlocking cloud native capabilities. The shift was designed to be faster and simpler than a staged, multi-step migration.
"The outstanding feature is the collaboration between Datacom and my team to work in one big move. We started Friday afternoon and finished Sunday morning - just for final testing,” he says.
Datacom Associate Director Cloud Transformation, Russell Page-Wood says, “Because Datacom both builds and operates its own infrastructure platforms and maintains deep capability across hyperscale clouds like Azure, we can meet customers where they are today and architect a clear path to where they need to be next; there's no gap in the journey.”
WineWorks provides bottling, storage and distribution for multiple wineries across New Zealand and its IT systems underpin everything from production scheduling to warehouse management and customer operations.
When the Comet decommissioning timeline was confirmed, the window to act was finite, but the relationship between WineWorks and Datacom meant the conversation started early, moved quickly, and was grounded in trust built over years of working together.
The challenge was twofold. First there was the technical constraint of moving a sizeable VM footprint, including SQL workloads, into a new home with no disruption to day-to-day operations.
Second, there was a governance and operational constraint: the team needed to adopt a modern cloud platform with proven resilience, security controls and potential for future cloud native services, all while meeting a tight deadline created by the end of life for the existing Comet platform.
The plan also needed to align with a long-term strategy to move into cloud-based operations, eliminating a double hop and ensuring that cloud capacity could scale with demand as the business evolved.
The new Azure foundation has fundamentally changed WineWorks’ operational footing. If one data centre experiences an issue, services remain available from another, removing the single point of failure that existed under the previous environment.
Centralised governance and security controls now align with enterprise frameworks, giving the business a level of protection and oversight that wasn’t possible before.
Scherf says, “While exact performance metrics are still being benchmarked, the reduction in operational noise and improved reliability represent clear tangible wins for business continuity.”
More importantly, the platform has unlocked capacity that was previously beyond reach. WineWorks can now scale compute and storage demands as the business evolves. The new platform has also opened the door to WineWork’s broader digitisation efforts. The company is now positioned to integrate machine telemetry and production analytics, with a clear path to AI readiness including Copilot integration and data query agents.
In practical terms, this translates to better visibility across operations; smarter decision-making and more predictable costs tied to actual demand rather than fixed infrastructure.
This migration demonstrates how a well-planned, tightly coordinated move into Azure can deliver a modern, governed cloud foundation that improves business continuity, enables scalable growth, and reduces the friction of managing critical systems. It is also a testament to the value of an integrated partnership with a trusted provider, the benefit of a strong knowledge base, and the ability to align cloud choices with an organisation's long term road map.
Datacom’s ability to unlock Microsoft funding through its partnership status meant WineWorks moved to a stronger foundation without bearing the cost, and the long-standing relationship between the two organisations meant the entire process was built on mutual understanding rather than cold handoffs.
The result is a more resilient operation that can better serve its winery customers, partners and internal teams with the agility to grow and the platform to innovate, now and into the future.
Page-Wood says, "This project showed what's possible when migration isn't treated as a one-off lift-and-shift but as a genuine step forward. WineWorks got a new home for its workloads and gained a governed, scalable foundation with a runway into analytics and AI. That's the standard we want to set for every customer navigating this kind of transition."
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