IDC Business Value Study: A 306% ROI within 3 years using Ubuntu Linux on Azure

Participants in the study indicated that Azure serves as a highly effective platform for managing their Ubuntu workloads, enhancing core business operations and facilitating the adoption of new technologies.

In today’s fast-paced environment, businesses face the challenge of innovating quickly, managing costs, and ensuring security—all while gearing up for an AI-driven future. To address these challenges, numerous organisations are opting for Microsoft Azure to upgrade their infrastructure. They discover that transitioning to Azure enables them to meet these changing demands by boosting agility, fortifying security, and establishing a groundwork for AI integration.

Microsoft Azure aids your migration and modernization efforts with services tailored for Linux and Open Source. At the heart of this transformation is Ubuntu, Canonical’s enterprise-strength Linux distribution, which works flawlessly with Azure’s IaaS and PaaS solutions. Together, they provide outstanding performance, dependability, and extensive enterprise support, along with a variety of tools that ensure a seamless migration process.

To present a data-driven insight into these benefits, Microsoft commissioned International Data Corporation (IDC) to conduct a business value study* based on interviews with organisations that transitioned their Ubuntu workloads from on-premises setups to Azure. Participants noted that Azure delivers a more streamlined and effective platform for these workloads, significantly enhancing their business functions and aiding the introduction of new technology. IDC analysts compiled the insights from these interviews to create a representative customer profile showcasing typical experiences and business outcomes. The aggregated data illustrates that operating Canonical Ubuntu workloads on Azure yields the following advantages:

• 306% return on investment over three years, with an 11-month payback period.
• 35% reduction in operational costs over three years.
• 63% faster deployment of new computing resources and 52% quicker scaling to seize new business opportunities.
• 85% decrease in unplanned downtime impacting users.
• $30.63M increase in revenue per organisation annually.

Quantifiable Benefits of Ubuntu on Microsoft Azure

IDC engaged with stakeholders associated with Ubuntu workloads on Azure, revealing substantial benefits highlighted by these businesses, including:

Execute Mission-Critical Workloads with Performance and Flexibility

Companies utilising workloads like data analytics, engineering simulations, and machine learning witness enhanced agility and operational efficiency with Ubuntu on Azure. By harnessing Ubuntu on Azure, organisations can scale effortlessly and swiftly adapt to shifting market dynamics, ensuring optimised application performance and propelling innovation while retaining a competitive edge.

“With Ubuntu on Azure, we’ve enabled AI adoption. We can scale innovations and test technologies such as GenAI, machine learning, and big data analytics without being constrained by infrastructure.”

Participants also emphasised the simplicity of migrating their Ubuntu workloads to Azure, which allows for easy capacity adjustments. The improvements in agility and development were evident as users could modify and scale their Ubuntu environments more quickly and flexibly on Azure, thereby minimising deployment-related hurdles in development and business processes.

“Scalability is a key reason we transitioned to Ubuntu on Azure. We now have the ability to rapidly scale and deploy flexibly, increasing our responsiveness to business needs by almost 40%.”

Enhance Security and Empower Your IT Teams

Security emerged as a prominent benefit for organisations embracing Ubuntu on Azure. They reported improved operational resilience and diminished exposure to security vulnerabilities and performance risks. Azure’s in-built security features, including Microsoft Defender for Cloud, offer ongoing security assessments, threat detection, and actionable recommendations. This enables IT teams to proactively uncover vulnerabilities, respond promptly to potential threats, and ensure robust protection, ultimately fostering business continuity and establishing trust with customers and stakeholders.

“The security features of Ubuntu on Azure, like Microsoft Defender for Cloud, provide continuous security assessments and actionable insights. This proactive strategy helps us identify vulnerabilities before they can be exploited, which is precisely what we need.”

Moreover, IT teams have shifted focus from maintenance-heavy tasks to strategic, innovation-focused initiatives, including AI projects. The move to Azure simplified operations, streamlined development cycles, and allowed teams to accelerate progress on critical business projects by using integrated AI tools and infrastructure designed for rapid experimentation and deployment.

“Utilising Ubuntu on Azure, we can take advantage of AI and redirect our IT team’s efforts. Managing on-premises infrastructure was a challenge, but Azure’s AI services have uplifted our applications and driven innovation, leading to a 25% improvement in productivity.”

Lower Operational Costs While Scaling Efficiently

Companies have also identified considerable cost efficiencies when using Ubuntu on Azure. By leveraging Azure’s pay-as-you-go model and eliminating hardware maintenance costs, businesses have achieved significant savings in both infrastructure and licensing.

The IDC study revealed that organisations reduced their costs for running Ubuntu workloads by an average of 35% over three years, saving about $6,500 per Azure virtual machine. Many also reported an approximate 29% annual reduction in infrastructure expenses, translating to around $581,100 each year.

“Utilising Ubuntu on Azure has lowered our direct IT expenses by 40%, optimising our resource allocation and leading to improved operational efficiency and savings in staff time.”

“Ubuntu on Azure offers substantial cost reductions and scalability in comparison to on-premises solutions, providing excellent integration and interoperability while addressing data challenges, thus enhancing accuracy and availability for informed business decisions.”

Discover More from the IDC Study

*IDC White Paper, sponsored by Microsoft, The Business Value of Ubuntu on Microsoft Azure, doc # US52857024, January 2025.