Cloud Applications
Your applications shouldn’t be holding the business back.
Most organisations we speak to are carrying applications that were fit for purpose five or ten years ago, but are now slowing delivery, blocking integration, or running on infrastructure edging toward unsupported. Rebuilding everything isn’t realistic. Neither is leaving it all alone. We help you work out what to modernise, what to rebuild, what to replace — and then deliver it, on Microsoft Azure, with your team alongside ours.
A recent modernisation
Standards Australia’s Connect platform — a legacy system brought forward into something their staff and members actually want to use.
Microsoft Solutions Partner — 4 Specialisations across 3 Solution Partner areas, delivering on the Microsoft stack for over twenty years.
Trusted by Australian organisations across sectors
The conversation we keep having
In most of the organisations we work with, the hard problem isn’t a single legacy application. It’s the cumulative drag: changes that used to take days now take months, integrations that should be straightforward require custom work, new ideas get dismissed because “the old system can’t do that.” Cloud application modernisation is less about any one technology choice and more about getting your application estate back to a state where the business can move.
There’s no single right answer — the choice between rehosting, refactoring, rebuilding and replacing depends on the application. What matters is that someone works through the options with you honestly, and then delivers what’s agreed. That’s the work.
Our services
Whether you’re rescuing a legacy system, building something net-new, or putting in the DevOps foundations that make future change cheaper — the work is rarely just one of these. Most engagements touch two or three. Start where you need to start; we’ll help you sequence the rest.
New applications, built for Azure from day one — microservices, serverless, event-driven patterns, and the elasticity that comes with being properly cloud-native. Suits organisations building products, member portals, or business platforms that need to scale.
Learn moreFor the processes where off-the-shelf doesn’t fit the way you actually operate. Purpose-built line-of-business applications that match your workflow, integrate with your core systems, and avoid the compromises that come with configuring a generic product sideways.
Learn moreFor applications that are still earning their keep but need a lift — rehost, replatform, refactor, or re-architect, depending on where each one sits on the value-and-risk curve. Standards Australia’s Connect platform is one example: a legacy system brought forward into something their staff and members actually want to use.
Learn moreThe hardest applications to deal with — deeply embedded, tightly coupled, business-critical, and often the reason “we can’t do that yet.” We’ve taken the quiet, high-risk path out of these systems before: API-layer abstraction, staged cutover, or full rebuild where the business case holds up.
Learn moreDeep Azure — App Service, Azure Functions, Azure SQL, AKS, API Management, Microsoft Entra ID, Event Grid. The native services, used the way Microsoft intends, aligned to the Azure Landing Zone and Cloud Adoption Framework so the platform itself doesn’t become the next thing to rebuild.
Learn moreInfrastructure as code (Terraform, Bicep), CI/CD pipelines in GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps, environment automation, and the guardrails that make releases boring in a good way. Without this layer, modernisation gains erode quickly. With it, every future change is faster than the last.
Learn moreHow we work
Modernisation programmes go sideways when teams over-commit up front and under-deliver later. We structure engagements the other way around — a short, fixed-fee assessment, a first production release as soon as reasonably possible, then steady ongoing delivery once the pattern is proven.
We assess your applications against business value, technical health, and risk. You get a prioritised modernisation roadmap, an approach per application (rehost, refactor, rebuild, replace), and a clear first release candidate.
Azure Landing Zone, DevOps pipelines, and the first application release into production — real users, real traffic. Foundations are built to be reused by every subsequent release, so the second application is always faster than the first.
Subsequent applications moved through the same pattern, on a prioritised backlog you control. Sprint reviews, release notes, and a roadmap that updates as the business does — not a fixed plan that drifts out of date in month three.
A dedicated Technical Lead, fortnightly delivery sprints, monthly roadmap reviews, and active performance monitoring. Your applications keep evolving. The team that knows them stays in place.
Why Antares
There are plenty of firms that will run a modernisation workshop. Fewer will stand behind the code that comes out of it. We’ve been delivering on the Microsoft stack for over twenty years, and modernisation is one of the things we do most often.
Four Microsoft Specialisations across three Solution Partner areas, and Australian delivery teams working across Azure, Microsoft 365, Power Platform, and Microsoft Fabric every day. Your modernised applications live alongside the rest of your Microsoft estate — designed that way from the start, not integrated later.
Sometimes the best answer is to rebuild. Sometimes it’s to leave the core alone and wrap it in an API layer. Sometimes it’s to retire the application entirely and move the process somewhere else. The assessment decides — not the sales conversation.
The developers and engineers who deliver your modernisation programme are the same team available through our managed application service after go-live. Fortnightly sprints. A dedicated Technical Lead. No knowledge loss at the handover, because there isn’t one.
Start with a conversation
Tell us a bit about your application estate and what’s getting in the way. We’ll come back with either a proposal for a fixed-fee modernisation assessment, a suggestion to start somewhere smaller, or — if it’s not the right moment — an honest “not yet, and here’s why.”
Usually we reply within one business day. Based in Sydney and Melbourne. No commitment, no pressure.Tell us about your application estate
Frequently asked questions
Cloud application modernisation is the work of bringing existing applications up to current standards — or replacing them — so they run securely, scale reliably, and integrate cleanly with the rest of your technology estate. Depending on the application, that might mean rehosting to Azure, refactoring code, replacing a legacy system entirely, or wrapping it in an API layer while the core is retired over time. There is no single answer. The right approach depends on the application’s business criticality, the state of its code, and what you need it to do in the next three to five years.
We run a discovery engagement that assesses each application against business value, technical health, integration dependencies, and risk. Applications that work well but run on unsupported infrastructure are often candidates for rehosting or replatforming. Applications with embedded business logic but dated user interfaces are better suited to API-layer modernisation or refactoring. Applications that no longer fit the business are candidates for rebuild or replacement. The point of the assessment is to apply the right approach to each application — not apply the same approach to all of them.
Azure is where most of our delivery sits, and it is where we go deepest — App Service, Azure Functions, AKS, Azure SQL, API Management, Microsoft Entra ID, and the Azure Landing Zone patterns aligned to Microsoft’s Cloud Adoption Framework. Most of the organisations we work with have chosen Microsoft as their primary cloud, so the stack matters. Where a specific component requires a third-party service, we integrate it cleanly — but the platform is Microsoft-native by default.
Applications need ongoing attention — platform patches, new integrations, changing business requirements, and the Microsoft roadmap moving underneath them. Our managed application service runs in fortnightly sprints with a dedicated Technical Lead who knows your environment. We monitor performance, flag what’s coming on the Microsoft roadmap, and work through a prioritised backlog against a monthly roadmap review. The intention is a team that feels like an extension of yours, not a vendor to re-engage every time something needs to change.
For a single application with a clear scope, the path to production is usually measured in weeks rather than months — two to three weeks for the assessment, another four to eight for the first release, depending on complexity and data integration work. Programme-level modernisation across a portfolio of applications typically runs as a series of sequenced releases over six to twelve months, with foundations and DevOps platform work delivered early so subsequent applications ship faster.
Delivery is led by an Australian-based team — architects, developers, and platform engineers based in Sydney and Melbourne — working directly with your people. We have onshore delivery capacity and established offshore partnerships for scaling development when the work calls for it, but the accountability and client-facing team sit locally.
