Microsoft Azure Service Consolidation

An effort across Azure’s core services to consolidate its offerings to simplify navigation, drive service discovery, and make it easier for customers to find and adopt the right cloud solutions.

Year
2024

Client
Microsoft

My role

I served as the lead designer for the Azure “Hub” service patterns from Jan 2024 to May 2025. I drove alignment across emerging Hubs and produced UX guidance for new teams to adopt the Hub model.

Scope + context

An effort across Azure’s core services to consolidate its offerings to simplify navigation, drive service discovery, and make it easier for customers to find and adopt the right cloud solutions.

Through regular customer satisfaction studies and surveys, we knew that our users struggled with the complexity of Azure. They were clear that they wanted it to just be simpler. They also struggled to find the right services to fit their needs. They had difficulty when trying move across the portal from one service to another.

Before service consolidation, Azure’s services lacked hierarchy

Problem statement

Azure customers experience two main issues when using the Portal:

Discovery

Customers struggle to find, understand, differentiate, and choose among our 500+ services (and growing). Services don't necessarily align with products marketed through ACOM and by our sales teams.

Navigation

Azure is complex and overwhelming when trying to piece together disparate services across Portal experiences to configure them to work together.

With the introduction of hubs, relationships across products are introduced.

What is a Hub, and how can it help?

A “Hub” is a consolidated grouping of services and resources that fulfils the needs of related user scenarios. A Hub is designed to help users:

  • Discover and differentiate product offerings to make a faster, educated choice

  • Provide critical context to support adoption and success

  • Support management tasks beyond resource boundaries

"Adri is so patient and thoughtful. She helped me highlight my work in a way that makes me so proud of my unique approach to design."

— Collette Noll