With thousands of stores operating across multiple countries, this leading European retailer runs a business where every minute of downtime directly impacts revenue and customer experience.
When the retailer’s data center lease neared expiry, with less than six months to act, the situation quickly became more than an infrastructure challenge. It was a business-critical moment.
Their existing environment was constrained by aging hardware, limited scalability, and increasing operational instability, and years of accumulated dependencies. At the same time, the organization needed to ensure zero disruption to always-on retail operations.
What followed was not just a cloud migration. It was a high-stakes transformation under extreme time pressure. The retailer partnered with Nagarro to move its enterprise landscape to Google Cloud while maintaining full business continuity.

The challenge

The retailer had to complete a large-scale cloud migration within a fixed six-month window while keeping more than 3,100 stores fully operational. The environment was complex, business critical, and only partially documented. This made discovery, validation, planning and execution even more challenging. But the real challenge however, was to move systems to Google Cloud with agility, at scale, and without disrupting day-to-day retail operations.

The scale and complexity of the migration were significant:

A network globe with a Nagarro scribble and design

200+ VMware VMs

Migrated from aging clusters across multiple data centers directly to Google Compute Engine.

1.2+ PB of data

Ensuring integrity across hundreds of business-critical databases.

Kubernetes-based workloads

Seamlessly shifted alongside complex legacy systems.

Hardcoded IP dependencies

Bridging thousands of PoS and terminal devices across 3,100+ stores.

The challenge was further compounded by an undocumented IT landscape and the need to support 7-day retail operations without disruption. One of the most critical constraints was the store network. Thousands of devices were dependent on static IPs, making any large-scale reconfiguration risky, time-consuming, and potentially disruptive.


To solve these "impossible" networking constraints, Nagarro implemented Hybrid Subnets at scale, enabling servers to retain their original IPs in the cloud. This helped avoid a massive store-network reconfiguration while ensuring seamless connectivity between on-premise systems and Google Cloud.

 

 

The solution

Engineering continuity at scale

Nagarro designed a balanced migration approach that combined re-hosting and re-platforming, executed through carefully planned waves. The approach was built around one clear priority: move fast without disrupting the business. Static IP dependencies across PoS systems were addressed through an innovative hybrid networking solution. This enabled seamless continuity across on-premise and cloud environments while keeping store operations stable.

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In parallel, Nagarro established a secure, enterprise-grade cloud foundation, including:

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Governed landing zone with IAM and network segmentation

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Automated provisioning using Terraform

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CI/CD-driven deployment pipelines

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Real-time monitoring and observability

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Automated documentation (CMDB–Confluence integration)

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Cloud compliance enablement (Cloudpulse)

 

 

This ensured that the migration did more than move workloads. It created a scalable, production-ready cloud environment designed for resilience, governance and, future growth.

The breakthrough

Despite the scale and technical complexity, the transformation delivered measurable business impact:

 

0 mins
of unplanned downtime, ensuring uninterrupted retail operations 
200+
VMs migrated across a complex enterprise landscape
1.2+ PB
of data moved with integrity and continuity 
25%
reduction in transformation costs, supported by the ~USD 320K Google Cloud migration funding secured by Nagarro

Additionally, the organization achieved:

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Faster and automated
deployments

360 service-1

Improved system performance and operational efficiency

scale

Enhanced scalability to manage fluctuating retail demand

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Faster expansion readiness, supporting the opening of 200+ new stores post-migration

data cloud

Removal of data center constraints and infrastructure bottleneck

Non-compliance identification and reporting

Strengthened governance through automated documentation and compliance alignment

 

A foundation for continuous growth

What began as a time-sensitive data center exit evolved into a strategic cloud transformation initiative that effectively broke the cycle of hardware-dependencies and licensing constraints. By decoupling their business logic from the physical limitations of the old site, the retailer has transitioned from a "maintenance-first" mindset to an "innovation-first" strategy.

Today, the retailer operates on a secure, scalable, and resilient cloud foundation that serves as the digital backbone for more than 3,100 stores.

This environment allows them to:

  • Provision resources in minutes rather than months, enabling instant support for new store openings across Europe.
  • Eliminate the overhead of managing hypervisors and aging hardware, redirecting focus toward enhancing the customer journey.
  • Scale elastically to handle seasonal peaks without the need for over-provisioning or emergency hardware investments.
Continuous growth

 

More importantly, the migration has created a solid foundation for continuous innovation. With Google Cloud, the retailer can now explore advanced data analytics and modern application architectures, and microservices-led growth while maintaining the operational stability required for high-volume discount retail. The result is a platform built not just to keep the business running, but to help it grow with agility and resilience.