JJ Foodservice and Appvia deliver a scalable cloud foundation on Azure

JJ Foodservice, one of the UK’s largest foodservice wholesalers, teamed up with Appvia to modernize infrastructure, improve agility, and expand cloud capabilities with a scalable, secure Azure foundation.

July 3, 2025

As businesses across industries push to modernize their infrastructure, many find themselves caught between the promise of the cloud and the complexity of its implementation. Balancing speed, security, and internal capability isn’t easy, especially for organizations with lean IT teams and/or legacy systems in place.

This London-based cloud-native consultancy and Microsoft Solutions Partner has been helping organizations navigate these challenges since becoming a Microsoft partner in 2020. Appvia holds designations in Digital & App Innovation and Infrastructure, with specializations in Kubernetes on Azure as well as Infrastructure and Database Migration. Their approach combines deep technical expertise with automation and a paired engineering model that embeds their experts alongside client teams, empowering their customers to simultaneously build internal capability and modernize.

This hands-on, partnership-driven model made Appvia the ideal choice for JJ Foodservice, a leading UK food distributor serving restaurants, caterers, and wholesalers nationwide. With a small IT team, growing operational demands, and urgent infrastructure deadlines, JJ Foodservice needed to move quickly to the cloud. But more than speed, they wanted a solution built for sustainability and a partner they could trust to guide them through it.

Together, Appvia and JJ Foodservice delivered a full-scale Azure migration in just six weeks, creating a secure foundation for growth and unlocking long-term value across the business.

Aligning infrastructure with business momentum

JJ Foodservice had already begun their migration to Azure but lacked the structure and automation needed to support further growth. With only two people managing on-prem infrastructure and a small but capable development team, the organization had no dedicated platform engineering function, which created a gap between their infrastructure and application teams.

Developers often had to wait up to four weeks for access to basic cloud resources, slowing delivery and blocking business-critical internal R&D projects. While JJ Foodservice had already invested in Azure, much of it had been implemented on an ad hoc basis without standardized governance, role-based access, or repeatable best practices. Workloads were therefore spread across inconsistent environments, making it difficult to manage cost, compliance, and scale.

Matters became urgent when JJ Foodservice faced a looming VMware license renewal along with aging on-prem hardware that required immediate attention. With some systems already out of support and others coming up on costly renewals, the company had just six weeks to modernize its infrastructure or recommit to a significant legacy spend.

Scaling their cloud environment under those constraints wasn’t just about speed; it was about moving quickly without losing control. The team needed a solution that would automate delivery, reduce manual overhead, and empower internal staff to take on more responsibility. Appvia saw an opportunity to do more than deploy infrastructure. By working alongside the team at JJ Foodservice, they helped close the gap between development and operations and gave the business the right tools to move forward with confidence.

Two people seated in a cafeteria looking at a laptop.

“Everything was quite manual at the time. If there was a large ramp up to the size of their estate, the existing mechanism wouldn't have been able to support it without significantly expanding the team.”

—Tom Orchard, Head of Sales, Appvia

Designing a secure, automated Azure foundation with room to grow

Appvia kicked off the engagement by laying the groundwork for a migration plan that was both technically sound and operationally sustainable. First, they conducted a series of collaborative discovery workshops to align on JJ Foodservice’s operating model, business goals, and technical requirements. They then assessed JJ’s existing infrastructure, including the aging on-prem systems and inconsistent Azure environment, and helped the team prioritize workloads based on modernization needs, dependencies, and business impact.

With those insights, Appvia designed and deployed a secure Azure landing zone using Microsoft’s ALZ Terraform modules, enhanced with automation to accelerate deployment and enforce consistency. This solution included guardrails around cost, compliance, and identity, as well as a persona-based access model that mapped real-world responsibilities to environment-specific permissions. It ensured that every workload had the right level of access, from development through production.

To support legacy modernization, Appvia leveraged its Kubernetes expertise to help JJ Foodservice containerize .NET Framework workloads previously confined to VMs. They deployed a Windows-compatible Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster with Group Managed Service Accounts (gMSA), allowing these applications to run securely within JJ’s modern cloud environment.

All infrastructure was codified in Terraform, enabling JJ Foodservice’s internal teams to manage their cloud platform through repeatable templates and self-service blueprints. The team also worked together to define a baseline application landing zone and automate new subscription provisioning, reducing time to deploy from weeks to minutes.

Throughout the engagement, Appvia used a paired engineering model, co-building alongside JJ Foodservice’s teams to ensure that decisions were clear and outputs were maintainable. By the end of the project, JJ Foodservice had not only migrated their workloads within the projected timeframe; they’d also developed the confidence and capability to operate on their own. And, just in case, Appvia remained available to offer guidance as needed via a limited post-deployment support agreement.

Two people looking at a display monitor and tablet.

“With all our customers, we really encourage pairing throughout delivery. In our experience, that’s far more effective than traditional training or post-project knowledge transfer. Our primary focus is always forming that partnership.”

—Tim Grant, Head of Cloud Solutions, Appvia

Unlocking speed, savings, and self-sufficiency across the business

In just under six weeks, JJ Foodservice had a fully operational Azure environment designed for scale, security, and autonomy. To celebrate, JJ’s leadership brought their entire engineering team to Appvia’s office—a gesture that underscored the trust, collaboration, and shared success behind the engagement.

Graphic showing three cost savings outcomes: £496K saved by avoiding a hardware refresh, £250K reduction in VMware licensing costs, and 15% slashed from the company’s IT budget.

Developers who had previously waited up to four weeks to use cloud resources could now provision them in minutes using automated templates and self-service subscription vending. This shift dramatically reduced operational bottlenecks and cleared the way for business-critical innovation. Projects that had stalled, like an open banking initiative that was projected to save the company £1.5M, quickly gained traction.

Further, the migration delivered immediate cost and efficiency benefits. JJ Foodservice saved £496K by avoiding a hardware refresh and cut £250K in VMware licensing costs. Moving to Azure-native services eliminated 15% of the company’s IT budget, which had previously gone toward third-party software. And, within 12 months of go-live, JJ Foodservice surpassed more than £200K in Azure consumption, evidence of both increased adoption within the company and leadership’s commitment to cloud-first operations.

By combining automation, upskilling, and strategic partnership, Appvia helped JJ Foodservice rapidly modernize its infrastructure while also building the in-house capability for future scaling. What began as a high-stakes technical engagement became a model for sustainable, business-led cloud transformation. “Our customers rely on us for speed and reliability, so our digital infrastructure has to keep up,” said Michael Dudley, Chief Technology Officer at JJ Foodservice. “This migration was about building a foundation for future innovation – one that gives our teams the agility and tools to deliver better service, faster.”

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