// Architecture

Migrating a legacy .NET application to Azure is rarely as simple as "lift and shift." Jonah Andersson — Microsoft MVP for Azure — shares candid lessons from a real-world cloud migration that became a cautionary tale, not because of Azure, but due to unresolved technical debt, database complexity, and organisational readiness gaps. Discover the critical questions every team should answer before committing to the cloud, and what Jonah would do differently today.

Chris and Matt build the world events engine in .NET, connecting it to the Player State models via project references. They design a state machine architecture for the game engine, discuss action points as a game mechanic, and plan the player decisions API in Go for the next episode.

Chris and Matt start building the Player State API using .NET Web API, defining data models for the SpaceBar management sim game. They scaffold the project, discuss minimal APIs versus controller-based approaches, and set up a GitHub Actions CI workflow to build and validate the service on every commit.

In this debut episode of ToolUp Tuesday, Chris and Matt kick off a new series by planning a massively multiplayer management sim game from scratch. They design a microservices architecture, choosing .NET for the world events engine and Go for player decisions, and set up a GitHub repository with GitHub Projects for backlog management.

Chris is joined by LaBrina Loving, Developer Advocate for Gaming at Microsoft, who shares her journey from twenty years of .NET and enterprise development into the world of game development. The episode covers growing cloud adoption among game studios, the key technical differences between enterprise and game development (latency, UDP vs TCP), how enterprise development skills transfer directly to gaming, and practical tips for any developer considering the leap.

In this session, we'll navigate through a typical real-world architecture of a solution and consider the decisions that we may wish to make at various stages. Alongside that, we'll factor in how requirements and design patterns can help influence our overall design, based on learnings from Chris' 5+ year journey taking customers to production on Azure.

In this session, we'll navigate through a typical real-world architecture of a solution and consider the decisions that we may wish to make at various stages. Alongside that, we'll factor in how requirements and design patterns can help influence our overall design, based on learnings from Chris' 5+ year journey taking customers to production on Azure.

Most organizations undergoing digital transformation are moving through maturity stages — from localized, monolithic setups toward agile, cloud-native, data-driven platforms. But what does it take to architect that journey? In this session, Asanka Abesinghe shares a practical framework covering the six design principles of digitally-driven organizations (decentralized, lean-agile, open standards, customer-centric, cloud-native, and data-driven), how to layer business, information, application, and technology architecture, and the evolving role of the architect as an organizational bridge between business strategy and technical execution. From the build-vs-buy decision to maturity-model road-mapping, this is an essential session for architects leading or contributing to enterprise transformation programmes.

Cloud migration is as much a people and process challenge as it is a technical one — a fact underscored by a 2020 Cloud Security Alliance study in which 90% of respondents reported a failed migration. In this episode, Chris is joined by Suzanne Tedrick, Azure Infrastructure Specialist at Microsoft and award-winning author of 'Women of Color in Tech', to explore how the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework provides a holistic, structured path to successful migrations. From governance and stakeholder alignment to multi-cloud strategy, this conversation covers the critical foundations every organisation needs before and during their cloud journey.

Chris Reddington is joined by Ivo, a cloud evangelist based in Belgium with hands-on experience transforming one of the country's largest telco providers. They explore how telecommunications companies are leveraging Azure to evolve from traditional connectivity providers into platform-scale service businesses — covering 5G, IoT, edge computing, AI/ML, Azure Arc, security, compliance, and the cultural challenges of cloud adoption in a regulated industry.