GCP to Azure Migration Center¶

Comparative positioning note

This document is written from the perspective of Microsoft Azure, Cloud Scale Analytics, and CSA Loom. Any description of third-party or competing products, services, pricing, or capabilities is derived from publicly available documentation and sources believed accurate at the time of writing, and is provided for general comparison only. We do not claim expertise in, or authority over, any non-Microsoft product or service; the respective vendor's official documentation is the authoritative source for their offerings, which may change over time. Nothing here is intended to disparage any vendor — where a competing product has genuine advantages, we aim to note them honestly. Verify all third-party details against the vendor's current official documentation before making decisions.

The definitive resource for migrating from Google Cloud Platform analytics to Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Fabric, and CSA-in-a-Box.

Who this is for¶

This migration center serves federal CIOs, CDOs, Chief Data Architects, platform engineers, data engineers, and analysts who are evaluating or executing a migration from GCP analytics services (BigQuery, Dataproc, GCS, Looker, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, Cloud Composer, Vertex AI) to Azure-native services. Whether you are responding to an Assured Workloads compliance gap, an IL4/IL5 coverage requirement, a procurement consolidation mandate, or a strategic shift toward open storage formats, these resources provide the evidence, patterns, and step-by-step guidance to execute confidently.

Quick-start decision matrix¶

Your situation	Start here
Executive evaluating Azure vs GCP	Why Azure over GCP
Need cost justification for migration	Total Cost of Ownership Analysis
Need a feature-by-feature comparison	Complete Feature Mapping
Ready to plan a migration	Migration Playbook
Federal / government-specific requirements	Federal Migration Guide
Migrating BigQuery or Dataproc	Compute Migration
Migrating GCS data	Storage Migration
Migrating Dataflow, Composer, or Pub/Sub	ETL Migration
Migrating Looker or Looker Studio	Analytics Migration
Migrating Vertex AI or BigQuery ML	AI/ML Migration
Migrating IAM, DLP, or Data Catalog	Security Migration

Strategic resources¶

These documents provide the business case, cost analysis, and strategic framing for decision-makers.

Document	Audience	Description
Why Azure over GCP	CIO / CDO / Board	Executive white paper covering federal compliance superiority, unified Fabric platform, M365 ecosystem synergy, open Delta Lake format, and talent availability
Total Cost of Ownership Analysis	CFO / CIO / Procurement	BigQuery editions vs Fabric capacity, Looker seat costs vs Power BI, 5-year TCO projections across three federal scenarios, hidden cost analysis
Federal Migration Guide	CISO / ISSO / Compliance	Assured Workloads vs Azure Government, FedRAMP High coverage gaps, IL4/IL5/IL6 comparison, ITAR, CMMC, agency-specific patterns

Technical references¶

Document	Description
Complete Feature Mapping	50+ GCP services mapped to Azure equivalents across storage, compute, ETL, BI, AI/ML, governance, monitoring, and DevOps with migration complexity ratings
Migration Playbook	The original end-to-end migration playbook with capability mapping, worked examples, phased 34-week project plan, and competitive framing

Migration guides¶

Domain-specific deep dives covering every aspect of a GCP-to-Azure migration.

Guide	GCP capability	Azure destination
Storage Migration	GCS, BigQuery managed storage, object lifecycle	ADLS Gen2, OneLake, Delta Lake
Compute Migration	BigQuery SQL/ML, Dataproc Spark, slots, clustering	Databricks SQL, Fabric, dbt, Direct Lake
ETL Migration	Dataflow, Cloud Composer, Dataform, Pub/Sub, Cloud Functions	ADF, dbt, Databricks Workflows, Event Hubs, Azure Functions
Analytics Migration	Looker, LookML, Looker Studio, Explores, embedding	Power BI, DAX, semantic models, Power BI Embedded
AI/ML Migration	Vertex AI, AutoML, BigQuery ML, Gemini, AI Search	Azure ML, Databricks MLflow, Azure OpenAI, AI Search
Security Migration	Cloud IAM, Data Catalog, DLP, Cloud KMS, VPC SC	Entra ID, Purview, Key Vault, Private Endpoints, Defender

Government and federal¶

Document	Description
Federal Migration Guide	Assured Workloads vs Azure Government, FedRAMP coverage analysis, IL4/IL5/IL6, ITAR, CMMC, procurement, agency-specific patterns

How CSA-in-a-Box fits¶

CSA-in-a-Box is the core migration destination -- an Azure-native reference implementation providing Data Mesh, Data Fabric, and Data Lakehouse capabilities. It deploys a complete data platform with:

Infrastructure as Code (Bicep across 4 Azure subscriptions)
Data governance (Purview automation, classification taxonomies, data contracts)
Data engineering (ADF pipelines, dbt models, Databricks/Fabric notebooks)
Analytics (Power BI semantic models, Direct Lake, Copilot integration)
AI integration (Azure OpenAI, AI Foundry, RAG patterns)
Compliance (FedRAMP, CMMC, HIPAA machine-readable control mappings)

For capabilities beyond CSA-in-a-Box's current scope (e.g., Copilot Studio agents, Power Apps operational apps, Microsoft Fabric Real-Time Intelligence), this migration center provides direct guidance using the broader Azure and Microsoft ecosystem.

Migration timeline overview¶

gantt
    title Typical GCP Analytics-to-Azure Migration (34 weeks)
    dateFormat  YYYY-MM-DD
    section Discovery
    Inventory and mapping           :a1, 2026-01-06, 2w
    section Landing Zones
    Deploy CSA-in-a-Box DMLZ/DLZ   :a2, after a1, 5w
    section Pilot Domain
    Port one domain end-to-end      :a3, after a1, 8w
    section BigQuery Migration
    Wave-based dataset migration    :a4, after a3, 10w
    section Dataproc + Streaming
    Spark, Flink, Pub/Sub           :a5, after a2, 10w
    section Looker Migration
    LookML to Power BI              :a6, after a4, 10w
    section GCS Cutover
    Bucket-by-bucket migration      :a7, after a5, 10w
    section Decommission
    Read-only, cost baseline        :a8, after a7, 6w

Last updated: 2026-04-30 Maintainers: CSA-in-a-Box core team