Migrated in weeks. Managed for years.

Microsoft Azure planned, built and run by an Azure Expert MSP. Hosted in the South African datacentres, under one agreement with Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365.

Built on

Identity & access

Microsoft Entra ID

Network & connectivity

Hub and spoke, private endpoints

Governance & policy

Azure Policy, guardrails in code

Security baseline

Defender for Cloud, Secure Score

AI workloads

Azure OpenAI, next to your data

South Africa North · Johannesburg · 3 AZs

South Africa West · Cape Town

Microsoft Secure Score at Efficient Group

0 %

Azure regions in South Africa

Availability Zones in Johannesburg

Expert

Azure Expert MSP, independently audited

Braintree runs your Azure. Not just the migration.

Most Azure partners hand you a subscription and a dashboard, then move on. Braintree is an Azure Expert MSP. We design the landing zone, run the migration, then operate the estate every month after: monitoring, security posture, cost control and governance. One team accountable, under the same agreement as your Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365.

Every AI ambition lands on Azure first.

Before a business can use AI seriously, it needs a governed cloud foundation. Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry and Machine Learning run inside your landing zone, next to the data they learn from, under the same identity, security baseline and cost controls as the rest of your estate.

That is why the cloud review is the first step of every AI conversation we have. Get the foundation right, and AI stops being a pilot and becomes a workload.

Azure OpenAI Service

Models, deployed inside your tenancy

Azure AI Foundry

Build, evaluate and ship AI apps

Machine Learning

Training and inference, governed

Your data

South African regions, POPIA-aligned

The Azure stack you'll run. Five surfaces. One managed estate.

Azure Landing Zone

Identity, network, governance and a security baseline. The foundation, built once and version-controlled.

Defined in Bicep and Terraform

Built in the South African regions

Signed off before the build starts

Compute, storage & networking

Compute, storage and networking, built to your workloads and scaled in the South African regions.

24/7 managed operations

24/7 monitoring, patching and incident response on one Braintree SLA.

FinOps & cost control

Reservations, Azure Hybrid Benefit and right-sizing. Reviewed every month.

Defender for Cloud

Microsoft Defender for Cloud and a Secure Score baseline, reported monthly.

One Azure estate. Run as five disciplines, every month.

Migration is the project. Managed cloud is the relationship. After go-live, these five disciplines run on your estate every month. The Microsoft tooling named below ships in Azure today. Braintree operates it as an Azure Expert MSP.

Monitor

Watched, not checked

Azure Monitor

Metrics, logs and alerts from every workload, in one place. The estate is watched 24/7, not checked when something breaks.

Log Analytics

One query surface across the whole estate. Incidents get triaged against real telemetry, not guesswork.

Protect

Posture, continuously

Defender for Cloud

Continuous security posture assessment across every subscription. Misconfigurations surface before they become incidents.

Secure Score

One number for cloud security posture. Baselined at onboarding, tracked monthly, the trend reported to you.

Optimise

FinOps, monthly

Microsoft Cost Management

Spend visibility per subscription and per workload. Budget alerts before a threshold is reached, not after.

Azure Advisor & Reservations

Right-sizing, Reserved Instances and Azure Hybrid Benefit applied to live spend. FinOps as a monthly habit.

Govern

Forecast review

Azure Policy

Guardrails in code. Non-compliant resources are flagged or blocked before they reach production.

Microsoft Entra

Identity and access governed consistently across every Azure subscription. One control plane, not many.

Evolve

Reviewed quarterly

Cloud Adoption Framework

The estate reviewed each quarter against the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework. The roadmap stays current.

Platform services

Virtual machines moved to Azure platform services where the case proves out. Capacity planned ahead of demand.

Microsoft ships the platform. Braintree ships the operating discipline on top. The landing zone is defined in Bicep and Terraform, not click-configured. Azure Automation runbooks handle the routine work. Custom FinOps and Secure Score dashboards put the estate in front of you. Version-controlled, repeatable, audited.

Assess, Land, Migrate, Optimise.

Four stages to a managed Azure estate. The cost model is signed off before the build starts. Then the managed-cloud relationship begins.

Assess

We review your infrastructure, security posture and workloads. The output: a cloud readiness report, a migration scope and a cost model.

Land

The Azure landing zone built in the SA regions. Identity, network, governance and the security baseline.

$ Cost model sign-off gate

Migrate

Phased workload migration. Each workload tested and validated before cutover. No big-bang risk.

Optimise

FinOps from day one. Reservations, Azure Hybrid Benefit and right-sizing. Then the managed run-state, every month.

Braintree doesn't migrate your cloud and walk away. We run it as an Azure Expert MSP, every month after.

Migrating in, or already there. Both land on managed Azure.

Some buyers are moving off on-premises servers or a co-location datacentre. Others are already on Azure but self-managing it, watching costs drift. Both paths land on the same place: an Azure estate run by an Azure Expert MSP under one agreement.

Migrate to Azure

Best when you are on on-premises servers or a co-location datacentre.

Azure landing zone built first. Identity, network, governance and security baseline.
Phased workload migration. Each workload tested and validated before cutover.
Azure Hybrid Benefit applied to eligible Windows Server and SQL Server workloads.
Timeline: phased over weeks, scoped to your workloads.

Take over an existing Azure estate

Best when you are already on Azure but self-managing, with costs drifting.

A Secure Score baseline and a full cost review of the estate you already run.
FinOps cleanup. Reservations, right-sizing and Hybrid Benefit applied to current spend.
Moved onto the Braintree managed agreement. One SLA across Azure, Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365.
Timeline: managed run-state inside the first month.

One Microsoft Partner. One Intelligent Agreement. One Unified, Secure Solution.

Self-managed Azure carries a hidden operating cost: alert noise, patch gaps, cost drift and no single accountability when something breaks. Braintree replaces that with one managed agreement. Azure run under the same SLA as your Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365. One contract. One team. One Secure Score to answer for.

Azure on its own, patched when someone remembers.

Before. Self-managed sprawl.

One agreement. One SLA. One Secure Score.

After. One Intelligent Agreement.

96%

Microsoft Secure Score at Efficient Group, international best practice.

Efficient Group, a South African financial services firm. On-premises infrastructure migrated to Microsoft Azure and secured to international best practice, under one Braintree agreement.

Two SA regions

Azure South Africa North and West. Johannesburg North runs three Availability Zones. POPIA-aligned since 2021.

Azure Expert MSP

Microsoft's top managed-cloud accreditation, awarded after an independent third-party audit of production Azure operations.

Your cloud lives in South Africa.

Azure South Africa North runs in Johannesburg with three Availability Zones. Azure South Africa West stands by in Cape Town. Your workloads and your data stay inside South African borders, POPIA-aligned since 2021, with the latency of a datacentre up the road.

Azure regions on South African soil

Availability Zones in Johannesburg

POPIA-aligned hosting since

AWS, Microsoft Azure, and the practical winner.

What matters	AWS	Microsoft Azure with Braintree
Data residency in South Africa	One region, Cape Town	✓ Two SA regions. Joburg North with three Availability Zones, plus Cape Town
Fit with Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365	Separate identity, separate billing	✓ Same Microsoft Entra identity. One Microsoft Customer Agreement
Existing Windows and SQL licences	Limited Windows and SQL bring-your-own-licence	✓ Azure Hybrid Benefit on Windows Server and SQL Server
One partner, one SLA	Separate cloud, separate partner, separate SLA	✓ One Braintree agreement across Azure, Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365
Breadth of cloud-native services	The largest service catalogue in the market	Deep, second-largest catalogue. SA regions and POPIA-aligned controls from day one
5 to 1 in Microsoft Azure's favour. AWS wins on raw service-catalogue breadth. Honest.

Three Azure specialists. One direct line. Plus the 8-minute benchmark.

We match you to the right specialist when you book the cloud review. Names land in your calendar invite, not on a page you scrolled past.

Microsoft Certified · Azure Solutions Architect Expert

Microsoft Certified · Azure Administrator and Solutions Architect

Microsoft Customer Agreement ·
CSP

How does your cloud setup compare to the SA enterprise median?

8 questions, mapped against benchmarks from 220+ SA clients. You get a tier and the actions to close the gap.

From cloud review to managed Azure in three steps.

Tell us what you run today

On-premises footprint, current Azure estate, workloads, licences, what is and is not working. Ten minutes on your side.

Get the assessment

Braintree returns a cloud readiness assessment, a migration or takeover scope, a cost model and a risk summary. Inside five business days.

Review with an architect

Review the scope with an Azure architect. Confirm the landing-zone design, the migration phasing and the managed run-state. No sales pitch.

What CIOs ask before they book.

What does Azure Expert MSP actually mean?

It is the top managed-services accreditation Microsoft awards for Azure. A partner earns it by demonstrating technical depth in Azure managed services, maintaining a portfolio of production Azure environments, and passing an independent third-party audit. It is re-audited, not awarded once. For you, it means the partner running your estate has been checked by someone other than themselves.

How long does an Azure migration take?

It depends on the size and complexity of your environment. A straightforward server migration for a 200-person organisation typically runs 6 to 12 weeks. Larger environments with complex integrations or legacy applications take longer. The Assess stage, in the first five business days, gives you a realistic scope and cost model before you commit to anything.

What is Azure Hybrid Benefit, and do we qualify?

Azure Hybrid Benefit lets you apply your existing on-premises Windows Server and SQL Server licences to reduce the cost of running those workloads in Azure. If you have active Software Assurance, or you bought those licences through Braintree, you very likely qualify. We check eligibility during the Assess stage and apply it from day one, before any new spend.

How do you keep our Azure environment POPIA-aligned?

We configure your estate on the South African regions, Azure South Africa North in Johannesburg or Azure South Africa West in Cape Town, so customer data is processed and stored inside South African borders. We apply Microsoft’s POPIA-aligned security controls, set data retention policies, and document the technical controls for your compliance records. Data residency is a documented control, not a checkbox.

Can Braintree manage Azure if another partner did the migration?

Yes. Taking over an existing Azure estate is one of the two paths on this page. We start with a Secure Score baseline and a full cost review, tidy up the landing zone, then move the estate onto the Braintree managed agreement. Most handovers reach a managed run-state inside the first month.

How is Braintree Managed Azure different from a Microsoft support plan?

A Microsoft support plan gives you access to Microsoft’s engineers for break-fix support. You call when something is already broken. Braintree Managed Azure is proactive. We monitor the estate around the clock, review costs every month, patch before problems land, and answer to an SLA. We also know your business, not just the platform.

Does Azure sit under the same agreement as our Microsoft 365?

Yes. One Braintree agreement covers your full Microsoft estate: Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, security and devices. One invoice. One SLA. One contact. That is the One Intelligent Agreement model, and it is the commercial spine of this page.

What happens if our Azure spend spikes unexpectedly?

Managed Azure includes monthly cost reviews with Reservation and Azure Hybrid Benefit optimisation. We also set budget alerts at the subscription level. If spend moves toward a threshold you have set, you hear from us before it is reached. No invoice surprises.

Insights for CIOs and CFOs running Microsoft Azure.

Cost

Self-managed or managed Azure. The real cost of running cloud operations.

Self-managed Azure looks cheaper on paper. It is harder in practice.

POPIA and the cloud. What SA organisations need to document.

Compliance

Data residency, processing controls and a documented architecture. A practical view on POPIA-aligned Azure configurations and what the Information Regulator now expects.

FinOps

Azure Hybrid Benefit and Reservations. The spend most SA firms leave on the table.

Most organisations on Windows Server or SQL Server can cut the cost of those workloads in Azure. Very few claim it.

Azure is one surface of your Microsoft estate.

Security

The security layer that wraps it. Microsoft Defender, Sentinel, Entra and Purview. The Azure security baseline runs alongside a posture across every other surface. One Secure Score, one team accountable.

Modern Workplace

The desktop, on the same agreement. Microsoft 365 and Copilot, run under the same agreement as your Azure estate. The desktop and the datacentre, one contract, one SLA.

Data & Analytics

The data platform on top. Microsoft Fabric and Power BI run on Azure. When the data platform and the infrastructure share one partner, the path from raw data to decision is shorter.

Let's grow.

Book the 30-minute cloud review. We assess your estate, scope the
migration or the takeover, and model the cost before you commit. No pitch deck.

Specialists in Business Applications, Modern Workplace and Azure.

Migrated in weeks. Managed for years.

Identity & access

Network & connectivity

Governance & policy

Security baseline

AI workloads

Expert

Braintree runs your Azure. Not just the migration.

Every AI ambition lands on Azure first.

Azure OpenAI Service

Azure AI Foundry

Machine Learning

Your data

The Azure stack you'll run. Five surfaces. One managed estate.

Azure Landing Zone

Compute, storage & networking

24/7 managed operations

FinOps & cost control

Defender for Cloud

One Azure estate. Run as five disciplines, every month.

Assess, Land, Migrate, Optimise.

Assess

Land

Migrate

Optimise

Braintree doesn't migrate your cloud and walk away. We run it as an Azure Expert MSP, every month after.

Migrating in, or already there. Both land on managed Azure.

Migrate to Azure

Take over an existing Azure estate

One Microsoft Partner. One Intelligent Agreement. One Unified, Secure Solution.

Before. Self-managed sprawl.

After. One Intelligent Agreement.

96%

Two SA regions

Azure Expert MSP

Your cloud lives in South Africa.

AWS, Microsoft Azure, and the practical winner.

Three Azure specialists. One direct line. Plus the 8-minute benchmark.

Azure practice ead

Cloud Migration & Landing Zone Architect

Commercial Lead, One Intelligent Agreement

How does your cloud setup compare to the SA enterprise median?

From cloud review to managed Azure in three steps.

Tell us what you run today

Get the assessment

Review with an architect

What CIOs ask before they book.

Insights for CIOs and CFOs running Microsoft Azure.

Cost

Self-managed or managed Azure. The real cost of running cloud operations.

POPIA and the cloud. What SA organisations need to document.

Compliance

FinOps

Azure Hybrid Benefit and Reservations. The spend most SA firms leave on the table.

Azure is one surface of your Microsoft estate.

Security

Modern Workplace

Data & Analytics

Let's grow.

Azure practice
ead