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Azure to Google Cloud Migration, a Practical Guide for 2026

In this article

• Quick Answer
• Key Takeaways
• Why do companies move from Azure to Google Cloud?
• How do Azure services map to Google Cloud?
• How does Microsoft licensing change when you leave Azure?
• What happens to Entra ID and Microsoft 365?
• What does an Azure to Google Cloud migration cost?
• What changes for teams in India?
• How long does an Azure to Google Cloud migration take?
• What are the most common Azure to Google Cloud migration mistakes?
• Frequently Asked Questions
• How can Unico Connect help with an Azure move?

Most of an Azure to Google Cloud migration looks like any other cloud move. You map services, build a landing zone and move workloads in waves. What decides the budget is the Microsoft layer. Windows Server and SQL Server licences that are cheap to run on Azure can get expensive once they leave it, Entra ID can stay in charge of sign in, and Microsoft 365 can keep running after the servers have moved. This guide starts there, then covers the service mapping, the cost of the move and what changes for teams in India.

Why do companies move from Azure to Google Cloud?

Often the trigger is data and AI, a team that wants BigQuery and Gemini on the same data instead of running Synapse and Azure OpenAI side by side. Another is a move from Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace, after which keeping the servers on Microsoft gets harder to justify. Some teams move for containers, because GKE Autopilot and Cloud Run take a lot of cluster and platform work off a small team.

Cost alone is a weak reason. Azure Hybrid Benefit makes Azure hard to beat for Windows heavy estates, and it stays behind when you leave. If your estate is mostly Windows Server and SQL Server and the goal is a smaller bill, we would optimise Azure first. If the platform decision is still open, start with our framework to choose GCP over AWS or Azure.

How do Azure services map to Google Cloud?

Compute, storage, SQL Server on VMs and the open source databases have direct counterparts and a Google tool that moves them. Cosmos DB on its NoSQL API, Logic Apps and Functions bindings are where the engineering time goes, because each one is rewritten, not moved.

Azure services and their Google Cloud equivalents in 2026

Azure services and their Google Cloud equivalents in 2026

Azure service	Google Cloud equivalent	What changes in the move
Virtual Machines	Compute Engine	Migrate to Virtual Machines replicates Azure VMs with managed disks. VMs with ephemeral OS disks or unmanaged disks are not supported, and temporary disk data does not carry over. Windows licensing needs a fresh plan
Blob Storage	Cloud Storage	Storage Transfer Service reads straight from Azure Blob Storage in Central India, South India and West India. India South Central in Hyderabad is not on its supported list, so copy that data to a supported Azure region first or move it with a copy tool
SQL Server on Azure VMs	Cloud SQL for SQL Server, or SQL Server on Compute Engine	Database Migration Service replicates it from full backup and log files in Cloud Storage. Cloud SQL includes the licence in its price, and on Compute Engine License Mobility decides whether you can bring your own
Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance	Cloud SQL for SQL Server	Not a direct Database Migration Service source for Cloud SQL for SQL Server. Use a BACPAC export or bcp, and for Managed Instance a native backup, transactional replication or the Managed Instance link. Database Migration Service can convert both to PostgreSQL, Azure SQL Database from the S3 tier up
Azure Database for PostgreSQL and MySQL	Cloud SQL, or AlloyDB for PostgreSQL	Database Migration Service replicates Azure Database for MySQL and PostgreSQL Flexible Server continuously into Cloud SQL. Azure is not a listed direct source for AlloyDB, so one route is Cloud SQL first, then a second migration into AlloyDB
Cosmos DB	Firestore, Bigtable or Spanner	Depends on the Cosmos DB API. Apps on the API for MongoDB can keep their MongoDB drivers on Firestore with MongoDB compatibility once you check the features they use. Apps on the Cassandra API can move to the Spanner Cassandra interface with some rework. Apps on the NoSQL API have no equivalent, so plan a rewrite of the data access layer
App Service	Cloud Run	Containerise the app. Cloud Run runs Linux containers only, so Windows and .NET Framework apps port to modern .NET or move to Windows node pools on GKE Standard
Azure Functions	Cloud Run functions	Handler code ports. Bindings and triggers are redone
AKS	Google Kubernetes Engine	Manifests mostly port. Replace Azure specific ingress, storage classes and pod identity. Windows node pools need GKE Standard, since Autopilot has none
Synapse Analytics	BigQuery	The BigQuery SQL translator converts Azure Synapse T-SQL, currently in preview. The cost model moves to scanned bytes or reserved slots
Service Bus and Event Grid	Pub/Sub and Eventarc	Test ordering, sessions and dead letter handling
Logic Apps	Workflows or Application Integration	Definitions are rebuilt, not converted
Azure OpenAI in Microsoft Foundry	Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, formerly Vertex AI	Prompts and evaluations are rerun against Gemini
Key Vault	Secret Manager and Cloud KMS	Rotate secrets as part of the move rather than copying them
Azure Monitor	Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Logging	Dashboards and alerts are rebuilt
Entra ID	Cloud Identity, federated with Entra ID	Entra ID can stay your identity provider. Users sign in to Google Cloud with the same accounts
Front Door, CDN and Azure DNS	Cloud Load Balancing with Cloud Armor, Cloud CDN and Cloud DNS	Lower DNS time to live days before the switch
Management groups, subscriptions and resource groups	Organization, folders and projects	Design the hierarchy and IAM roles before the first workload moves
Virtual Network, VPN Gateway and ExpressRoute	VPC network, Cloud VPN and Cloud Interconnect	A Google Cloud VPC is global with regional subnets, while an Azure virtual network is regional. Redesign the address plan rather than copying it

How does Microsoft licensing change when you leave Azure?

Answer this before anyone prices the move. On a Windows heavy estate it can decide the business case by itself.

Azure Hybrid Benefit, which lets you use Windows Server and SQL Server licences you already own, exists only on Azure. Most Windows Server licences stay behind too. Since 1 October 2019, Microsoft lets licences move to listed providers such as Google Cloud only through License Mobility with Software Assurance, and License Mobility covers server applications, not the operating system, so Windows Server itself is left out.

The exception is narrow. A Windows Server licence can come with you only if three things hold. The version was released before 1 October 2019, so Windows Server 2019 or earlier. The licence came from a Microsoft enrollment effective before that date. And the VMs run on Google Cloud sole tenant nodes. Upgrade to a later version and the licence may no longer qualify. Everything else runs on Google Cloud Windows Server images, with an on demand licence that Google bills alongside the VM.

SQL Server has more room. With License Mobility through Software Assurance, SQL Server licences can be assigned to shared Google Cloud VMs. Without Software Assurance they are allowed only on sole tenant nodes, under the same pre October 2019 conditions as Windows Server. In that case our advice is to leave the old licences behind and use pay as you go SQL Server images or Cloud SQL for SQL Server, where the licence is part of the price.

Ask of every workload whether it still needs Windows. Some will, but for the rest, porting .NET applications to Linux containers, or SQL Server databases to PostgreSQL, costs less during a migration than after you have paid to move them as they are. Database Migration Service converts SQL Server to Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL or AlloyDB for PostgreSQL, and accepts Azure SQL Managed Instance and Azure SQL Database from the S3 tier up as sources. Cloud Run runs Linux containers only, so a .NET Framework app either ports to modern .NET or goes to Windows Server node pools on GKE Standard, since Autopilot has no Windows nodes.

Licensing terms change and depend on your agreement, so get a written review from your Microsoft licensing partner before you commit to a cost model.

What happens to Entra ID and Microsoft 365?

Entra ID can stay as your identity provider, and Google documents two ways to connect it to Google Cloud. The first provisions users, and optionally groups, from Entra ID into Cloud Identity or Google Workspace and delegates sign in to Entra ID over SAML. Provisioning runs one way and passwords are never synchronised. The second is Workforce Identity Federation. It needs no user synchronisation at all, but it works only with Google Cloud services that support it, and it maps up to 150 Entra ID groups in the standard setup, or 400 with the large group configuration. Our default is the first, since every Google Cloud service works with it, unless a policy against synchronising users rules it out. Either way people keep their Microsoft sign in, and Microsoft 365 carries on as before.

If productivity is moving to Google as well, treat it as its own project. Our guide to migrating from Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace walks through it, and Google Workspace pricing in India lists the official plans with GST invoicing. You can run both moves at once, but your people then take on two sets of change in the same weeks. We would sequence them.

What does an Azure to Google Cloud migration cost?

The one time bill covers the assessment, the landing zone, engineering for each wave, rewrites of the Azure specific services and a stretch of paying for two clouds while traffic moves across.

For a full exit, Microsoft credits your internet egress out of Azure, on top of the first 100 GB a month that every customer gets free. The credit depends on following its process in order.

1. Open an Azure Support request before any data moves, with your subscription or enrollment ID, your planned start date and an estimate of the volume. If the move will take longer than 60 days, include your migration timeline in this first request.
2. Move the data over the internet. The credit covers up to 60 days of egress from your stated start date. Traffic through ExpressRoute, ExpressRoute Direct, VPN, Azure Front Door or Azure CDN is excluded, so a bulk copy over a private link is billed as normal.
3. Cancel every subscription on the account.
4. Go back to Azure Support and claim the invoice level credit.

If you buy Azure through a partner, including a Cloud Solution Provider, the partner runs the claim. Because the process requires cancelling every subscription, the credit is no help for a hybrid end state.

Running cost depends heavily on the machine series. Sustained use discounts apply automatically on self serve Cloud Billing accounts once a VM of an eligible machine series runs for more than a quarter of the month, up to 30 percent on N1, M1 and M2 and up to 20 percent on N2, N2D and C2. Sole tenant nodes of the eligible series qualify too, which helps if you bring older Windows Server licences onto dedicated hardware. Google Cloud bought through Unico does not receive sustained use discounts, and committed use discounts are available instead. Compare the committed Azure rate with the committed Google Cloud rate for the same workload, and treat any fixed saving percentage in a proposal as marketing. Our Google Cloud cost optimization guide covers the levers once you land.

Before you set dates, check what you still owe Azure. Apart from Red Hat, SUSE Linux and prepurchase plans, reservations can be refunded pro rata at the lower of the purchase price or the current price, but Microsoft caps cancelled commitment at 50,000 USD in any rolling 12 months for each billing profile or enrollment, and says it may add a 12 percent early termination fee in future. On pay as you go invoice and CSP accounts the refund is held against a future reservation purchase, which is no help once you leave, and Azure savings plans cannot be cancelled at all. Line each wave up with reservation and savings plan end dates so you pay for two clouds no longer than you have to.

Google Cloud funds qualifying migrations through its Rapid Migration and Modernization Program, RaMP, once each workload has a projected annual run rate of at least $60,000 of eligible Google Cloud spend. The terms are the same whichever cloud you leave, and our Google Cloud migration guide sets out the funding and credit caps. If you buy direct, ask Google about RaMP before the scope is fixed. When you buy Google Cloud through Unico, Unico is the party to the RaMP agreement with Google, so ask us whether your migration qualifies.

What changes for teams in India?

Azure gives you four regions in India, Central India in Pune, South India in Chennai, West India in Mumbai and India South Central in Hyderabad. Google Cloud runs two regions in India, Mumbai as asia-south1 and Delhi as asia-south2. West India maps straight across to Mumbai. Workloads in Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad land in Mumbai or Delhi, and latency goes up for users in the south. Disaster recovery takes the most rework. Microsoft pairs Central India with South India, West India with South India and India South Central with Central India, and only Central India and India South Central have availability zones, three each. None of those pairs exists on Google Cloud, so design recovery around Mumbai and Delhi from the start.

Accounts with an Indian billing address are billed in INR by Google Cloud India Private Limited, with 18 percent GST on the invoice, and a registered business that adds its GSTIN can claim input tax credit. RBI rules require extra authentication for any automatic card or UPI charge above 15,000 INR, so a growing bill needs a manual payment by card, NetBanking or UPI, or invoiced billing. Our guide to Google Cloud pricing in India compares the ways to buy and pay.

Residency rules do not change with the cloud. The DPDP Act 2023 does not require personal data to stay in India. Sector rules can, and the RBI payment data mandate applies on Google Cloud as it did on Azure, so pin regulated data to asia-south1 and asia-south2 with an organization policy before any data moves.

How long does an Azure to Google Cloud migration take?

A containerised app on Azure Database for PostgreSQL can move in one short project. A Windows estate with SQL Server, Cosmos DB and Logic Apps is a programme of several waves, and any date given before an assessment is a guess. Google Cloud Migration Center can discover your Azure VMs and estimate what they would cost on Google Cloud, which gives you a first sizing for the waves. The order after that is the licence review and the identity design, then stateless services, then data with continuous replication, with the cut over last.

What are the most common Azure to Google Cloud migration mistakes?

Most of them come from assuming something carries over from Azure when it does not.

• Pricing Windows workloads as if Azure Hybrid Benefit came along.
• Counting on the free egress credit while part of the estate stays on Azure, or while bulk data moves over ExpressRoute or VPN.
• Treating Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL Managed Instance like SQL Server on a VM. Plan a BACPAC export, a Managed Instance backup or a replication step instead.
• Rebuilding identity from scratch when federating with Entra ID would do, unless the business is leaving Microsoft identity too.
• Copying the Azure region pairs instead of designing recovery around Mumbai and Delhi.
• Moving Microsoft 365 and the infrastructure in the same month.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can Unico Connect help with an Azure move?

Unico Connect is a certified Google Cloud partner and reseller in India, based in Mumbai. On an Azure move we start with the licence and identity review, build a landing zone for Indian regions and move workloads in waves with a rollback at every step. If you buy Google Cloud through us, we bill the usage in INR with GST, and if Microsoft 365 is moving too, our Google Workspace team runs it as a separate project.