Australian superannuation fund CareSuper is migrating its applications and data from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to Microsoft Azure.

CareSuper has tapped Macquarie Cloud Services to head the program, which will see the fund exiting VMware Cloud on AWS to a "Managed Edge Azure Local Offering."

In total, this will require hundreds of applications and petabytes of data to be migrated and recalibrated.

“Our goal is to optimise every part of our operation so we can deliver long-term value to our members,” said Simon Reiter, CTO at CareSuper. “Cloud decisions must serve that mission, not just today, but five years from now. Macquarie Cloud Services stood out as a partner who could deliver both the technical transformation and the ongoing managed service maturity required.”

Macquarie Cloud Services will handle the migration, including setting up a new Azure landing zone, modernizing databases, and implementing platform-as-a-service offerings. In addition, Macquarie is assuming all risk of the migration with no upfront cost to CareSuper.

Reiter added: "What we’ve found in partnering with Macquarie Cloud Services is a team of experts who can transform, refactor, migrate, and ensure we get the best operational value from our cloud environment. That the company backs itself by taking on the cost risk of the migration phase is telling of its capabilities and commitment to putting customers first.”

VMware services, following the acquisition by Broadcom, are now set for a price hike in November 2025. Macquarie told DCD that this has motivated CareSuper, as well as several other companies, to move to an alternative platform.

"We’re seeing a wave of repatriation from AWS,” said Naran McClung, head of Azure at Macquarie Cloud Services. “For many organizations, rising costs and architectural limitations have made them re-evaluate. But it’s not just about moving away—it’s about moving forward. That’s where our team adds value.”

Macquarie further told DCD that in the case of CareSuper, they will use a "mix of Azure native services and ‘Azure Local’ that we host on Dell hardware we manage akin to a private cloud."

Azure Local is an on-premises Microsoft offer, wherein Azure hardware is hosted in a user's data center - in this case, likely a data center operated by Macquarie.

According to Macquarie, most of CareSuper's IaaS-centric workloads will run on Azure Local for 30 percent of the cost of AWS, and all other services will run out of the Azure Public Cloud.

Last year, another Australian superannuation fund - UniSuper - experienced an outage when Google accidentally deleted UniSuper's Private Cloud subscription.