In this Microsoft Ignite session, Microsoft Events presents technical guidance from Sam’s Club’s modernization of retail apps on Azure, featuring resilience strategies and platform transformation techniques.

Sam’s Club: Modernizing Mission-Critical Retail Apps with Azure

Microsoft Ignite 2025 Session BRK155

Speakers: Gautam Chandra, Justine Cocchi

Overview

Discover how Sam’s Club modernized its mission-critical retail applications by migrating to Azure. The session provides:

  • Fault tolerance and high availability concepts
  • Strategies for transforming legacy monolithic apps into cloud-native microservices
  • Hands-on implementation guidance using Azure services

Key Topics & Chapters

0:00 – Fault Tolerance and High Availability Explained

  • Define core concepts for resilient architecture in retail apps

7:04 – Cloud-Native Microservices Transformation

  • Steps to migrate from monolithic to microservice-based systems
  • Improved scalability and flexibility benefits

14:24 – Platform Modernization

  • Transitioning to service-layer architectures
  • Migrating microservices for optimized operations on Azure

16:00 – Resilience and Scaling in Cosmos DB

  • Multi-region deployment strategies
  • SDK tuning for performance

19:41 – Demo: Active-Active Multi-Region Failover

  • Live simulation showcasing seamless failover without service disruption

25:11 – E-Commerce Architecture Using Azure Services

  • Overview of simplified retail architecture leveraging Azure resources

32:13 – Saga Pattern for Data Consistency

  • Implementing saga pattern across distributed microservices
  • Ensuring reliable transaction management

33:54 – Active-Active System Architecture

  • Building architectures for uninterrupted service and scalability

38:28 – Scaling Compute and Storage with Azure SQL Hyperscale

  • Leveraging Azure SQL’s hyperscale capabilities for demanding workloads

Technical Strategies

  • Migrating and modernizing retail applications using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure SQL, and Cosmos DB
  • Applying resilience, high availability, and scaling patterns
  • Hands-on guidance for platform modernization and cloud-native transformation

Resources

Takeaways

Attendees will learn practical migration strategies, technical implementation of resilience and performance patterns, and how to operationalize modern architectures in Azure’s cloud ecosystem.