The Washington State Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) aimed to modernize its aging technical ecosystem, which was largely composed of on-premises datacenters. The agency recognized the need to improve efficiency, enhance cybersecurity, and better serve the 3.3 million workers it oversees. Additionally, the Washington State legislature encouraged state agencies to adopt cloud services, prompting L&I to collaborate with Microsoft on a 'move and modernize' strategy.

L&I completed its migration to Microsoft Azure in just nine months. The agency established a phased cloud migration roadmap that allowed for incremental moves of entire server environments without disrupting daily operations, ultimately transitioning more than 300 servers to the Azure cloud platform.

Since migrating to Azure, L&I has realized several benefits, including measurable cost savings on operational expenses, improved predictability for long-term computing needs, and enhanced infrastructure stability. The agency also anticipates a reduction in carbon emissions, contributing to Washington State's sustainability initiatives, and has fostered a more inclusive and collaborative workplace culture among its IT staff.