Orange County Information Technology (OCIT) has published a request for information (RFI) to help move its data, applications, and cloud services away from Microsoft Azure.

The Californian county said it is looking for input on approaches, tools, timelines, and costs related to migrating workloads to an alternative cloud provider, with the county stating it may award contracts to one or multiple respondents based on the proposals received.

The scope of services includes the migration of application services, networking configurations, storage, databases, and virtual machines, in addition to planning, testing, verification, training, and security validation. Eligible vendors are expected to account for security needs and data backup and recovery.

“The objective of this migration is to enhance the scalability, reliability, and cost-efficiency of our cloud infrastructure,” the procurement post reads. “This scope of work shall provide a comprehensive framework for migrating cloud services from Azure to [Cloud Service Provider]. By following this plan, we aim to achieve a seamless transition that enhances our cloud infrastructure's performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency.”

The deadline for question submissions is October 6, while RFI responses are due by November 3. OCIT did not say why it was seeking an alternative to Azure.

The estimated value range of the migration is between $5 million and $15 million, according to HigherGov.com, a website detailing government contracts and grants that have been put out for tender – although the site indicates this figure has been generated using AI.

This is the second time OCIT has sought to undertake such a large-scale migration. According to a report from GovTech, the county used to host an IBM mainframe but retired the hardware in 2022-23 after moving its last application off it, and in 2024-25 it reportedly moved a system to AWS.

OCIT’s budget for FY 2025-26 is $132.7 million, GovTech reported.