The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has begun a cloud migration effort.

Set to span at least three years, DFAT has "gone to market" for a technology provider to help with the migration of legacy on-premises applications to the cloud, as reported by ITNews.

As per the associated tender, the project is expected to start on December 15, 2025 with an initial contract duration of 36 months, extendable by a further 12 months. There are three possible extension periods.

Interested applicants have until October 28 to submit bids.

According to the ITN report, the project falls under DFAT’s wider “Digital Uplift Program” which “consists of a high number of discrete projects” including government collaboration and cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and the replacement of legacy infrastructure. The overall digital transformation program has a budget of AU$106.2 million (US$69.86m).

DFAT declined to provide ITN with further information about the project.

The Department has previously been a known customer of Microsoft, having adopted the cloud giant’s protected level cloud services in 2018.

DFAT was one of the many departments impacted by the Australian government directive requiring agencies to exit Global Switch data centers by September 2020. Defense and Home Affairs were also impacted by that exodus, motivated by Chinese steel giant Shagang’s investment in the data center provider.

Earlier this year, Australia's Department of Defence signed a five-year AU$495 million (US$324.71m) deal with Microsoft to use its cloud computing services. The major contract was signed despite the Department having previously signed a deal with AWS in July 2024 for a data center and cloud system that will be developed as a partnership between AWS and the Australian government, with the latter investing AU$2 billion (US$1.3bn) in the new system over the next ten years.