Nonprofit Goodwill Industries of the Valleys has fully migrated its IT operations to Microsoft's Azure cloud.

By moving to the cloud, Goodwill has been able to exit its central office which has been converted into a community center known as Melrose Plaza. The center, located in Roanoke, Virginia, will open in late 2024.

Goodwill received discounted services and grants from Microsoft Tech for Social Impact for the Azure migration, and according to Goodwill, has saved "hundreds of thousands of dollars" through the cloud move.

Hunter French, vice president of IT, said that - while the nonprofit was already migrating to the cloud - its plans for Melrose Plaza put the digital transformation into "superspeed."

“We couldn’t go slow. The on-premise tech was holding us to that location. We decided to go all-cloud, all-in,” said French.

The Goodwill IT team reviewed each of the nonprofit's virtual machines, switched to a SaaS model, and turned off servers as they went, including shutting down its IP telephony system and switching to Teams Phone instead. In total, the company has reduced its IT footprint from 112 on-premise servers to three rebuilt in Azure.

Once exited, the site was transformed into the community center and a grocery store.

“Simply put, technology transforms,” said French. “We left the legacy way of doing things behind. We’re now using this building to empower individuals, strengthen families, and transform the community.”

Throughout the migration process, Goodwill says that it has not experienced a service outage.

The decision to switch to cloud computing was motivated by a nearby nonprofit suffering a "substantial security breach." French said of this: "A cyber incident would grind what we do to a halt. But we’re doing big things in our community. We don’t have time to stop and deal with preventable security incidents."