Independent enterprise technology-change research

PT-2026-106 · dossier edition · 25 July 2026

PlatformTrace

Enterprise platform migrations, examined in public.

cloud infrastructure migration · Core migration completed and operational · High confidence

Washington Ecology moves its mission-critical GIS platform from a state data centre to Azure

The Washington State Department of Ecology migrated mission-critical GIS applications, infrastructure and approximately 60 TB of environmental data from traditional infrastructure in a state data centre to Microsoft Azure, supporting more than 700 daily users and public map access.

Organisation
Washington State Department of Ecology
Predecessor
traditional GIS infrastructure in a Washington state data centre
Destination
Microsoft Azure with Esri configuration support
Workload
mission-critical GIS applications, infrastructure and approximately 60 TB of environmental datasets supporting more than 700 daily users and public map access
Stage
Core migration completed and operational
Retirement status
The named GIS platform moved beyond reliance on the single physical data-centre environment; the source does not enumerate every residual state-data-centre dependency.
Confidence
High
Next trigger
A dated cutover, formal retirement statement or material later implementation milestone.
Evidence boundary: The source supports the bounded GIS-platform migration and current operational state. It does not prove that every Department of Ecology workload or every state-data-centre dependency was retired.

Programme context

The Washington State Department of Ecology migrated mission-critical GIS applications, infrastructure and approximately 60 TB of environmental data from traditional infrastructure in a state data centre to Microsoft Azure, supporting more than 700 daily users and public map access.

Why this matters: This record identifies a named organisation, source and destination platforms, an affected workload and an evidence-bounded operational stage.

Migration timeline

Date or stageMilestoneWhat changedEvidence status
Migration programmePreparationThe department prepared its mission-critical GIS estate and environmental datasets for Azure.Source-stated programme context
Core transitionMigration milestoneThe source says the core migration was completed within a few days.Source-stated duration; calendar date not stated
4 May 2026Dated sourceMicrosoft published the customer account.Dated primary evidence

Workload migration matrix

WorkloadPredecessorDestinationStatus by 25 Jul 2026
mission-critical GIS applications, infrastructure and approximately 60 TB of environmental datasets supporting more than 700 daily users and public map accesstraditional GIS infrastructure in a Washington state data centreMicrosoft Azure with Esri configuration supportCore migration completed and operational

Implementation and architecture

  • Azure hosts the mission-critical GIS applications and infrastructure.
  • Approximately 60 TB of environmental datasets support internal and public mapping workloads.
  • Esri supported configuration and migration of the GIS environment.

Known unknowns and contradictions

  • The exact calendar cutover date.
  • The complete inventory of residual state-data-centre dependencies.
  • Whether unrelated agency workloads remained in the same physical environment.

No missing fact is inferred to broaden the source-supported migration claim.

PlatformTrace analysis

The source supports the bounded GIS-platform migration and current operational state. It does not prove that every Department of Ecology workload or every state-data-centre dependency was retired.

Performance, cost, uptime and operational outcomes remain attributed source claims unless independently stated otherwise.

Evidence ledger

  1. Washington State Department of Ecology first-party vendor customer story, 4 May 2026

    Microsoft’s dated customer story identifies the state-data-centre source, Azure destination, GIS workload, data scale and operational current state.

Approval: Issue #47 standing-authority queue and Austin Lambe’s 25 July 2026 publication instruction.

Corrections and updates

25 July 2026 — Initial long-form Verified dossier published from the recovered complete five-lane intake and reconciled central filter. Later milestones will be appended rather than silently replacing this state.