ComAp ran ALVAO on-premises for years. As the company began moving its systems to the cloud as part of its wider strategy, shifting ALVAO to SaaS was the natural next step. The goal was clear: simpler administration, no more hardware to look after, and tighter security. After six months of preparation, ALVAO now runs in the cloud, the IT team has stepped away from server maintenance, and the whole company keeps its processes in one place and under control.
"Moving to the cloud pays off. Administration gets simpler and security improves, backed by infrastructure that both Microsoft and ALVAO keep an eye on."
— Tomáš Futera, Service Owner for ALVAO, ComAp
About ComAp
ComAp is a Czech technology company with global reach, founded in 1991. It develops and supplies smart solutions for power generation and control, from backup power sources to hybrid microgrids. It employs more than 400 people across 13 offices worldwide, and runs its internal operations on the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
The challenge: running their own servers no longer made sense
Running ALVAO on-premises meant maintaining two in-house servers, one for production and one for testing. That came with:
- regular updates,
- database backups,
- and constant attention to keeping the whole environment stable.
A handful of older customisations made things trickier still, because they reached directly into the database. Every update or change became fragile and technically demanding as a result.
Meanwhile, ComAp's global strategy pointed firmly towards the cloud. Moving ALVAO to SaaS was the logical way to make life easier for IT and remove the need for their own hardware.
The solution: step by step, with thorough testing
The team at ComAp left nothing to chance and planned the migration carefully in advance. Developers replaced the old database-level customisations with a modern approach over the REST API. That kept all the specific data and integrations fully working in the cloud environment too.
The whole process ran gradually. Each step was tested first in the UAT (user acceptance testing) environment, and only moved to live production once it was confirmed to work. ALVAO now runs in the cloud reliably and noticeably faster for users than it did on the old hardware.
"We take every new version to UAT first. I test everything calmly on my own, and only deploy to production once it's approved. That way of working gives me complete confidence."
— Tomáš Futera, Service Owner for ALVAO, ComAp
What the move to the cloud delivered
- No more infrastructure worries: IT no longer spends time maintaining two servers, installing updates, or watching over backups. Those tasks have gone entirely, freeing IT to focus on its own projects.
- Snappier performance: users notice that the cloud version responds faster and more smoothly than the old on-premises setup.
- A higher level of security: stability and security are handled by robust Microsoft Azure infrastructure, working alongside the ALVAO team.
- Native links to Microsoft: employees make full use of the Outlook and Teams add-ins to raise requests easily. Other internal systems talk to ALVAO purely through the API.
- Smoother audits: verifiable, tamper-proof records help the company meet the requirements of external audits (ISO) and the new cybersecurity legislation.
Security and audits in practice
In ALVAO, the full history of every request is clear to see: when it was raised, who worked on it, how it was decided, and who approved the outcome. ComAp values this overview during employee offboarding, for example. The company can show auditors at any time that all system access was removed promptly and securely.