GitHub transitions to Azure: a massive migration within integration with Microsoft

GitHub, which Microsoft acquired in 2018 for $7.5 billion, is preparing for a massive transition to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. This decision was made after the recent resignation of CEO Thomas Dohmke, which caused internal changes in the company’s structure.

Reason for Migration

According to GitHub’s Chief Technology Officer Vladimir Fedorov, the company is facing capacity limitations of its own data centers in Virginia. To ensure the scalability of services, especially in the context of AI and Copilot development, GitHub needs to transition to Azure.

GitHub is increasingly integrating into Microsoft’s CoreAI team. This process began back in 2021 when GitHub entered Microsoft’s developer division. Now the responsibility for GitHub is distributed among CoreAI leaders rather than concentrated in one person.

The migration will last for 12 months, but the company is allocating 2 years for the final completion of all processes. GitHub teams will temporarily pause the development of new features to focus on the move. Previous attempts to migrate individual services to Azure have been problematic, so this time the company aims to avoid prolonging the process.

Risks and Consequences

The migration is expected to cause temporary disruptions, especially due to the complex MySQL infrastructure. In the past, GitHub has faced serious outages, particularly in the Actions service and search.

GitHub is also transitioning to using Microsoft Teams instead of Slack to enhance interaction with other Microsoft teams.

Currently, GitHub is undergoing a serious crisis due to the surge in AI development. Microsoft possesses its own powerful advancements in this area, so the company has every chance to assist GitHub in transforming the service to meet contemporary realities. Alternatively, in Redmond, they might simply freeze the project, taking key employees and technologies away from it, as happened previously with Skype. The second scenario will not be disclosed in press releases, so we can only observe the development of events.