Scaling software inside traditional manufacturing: How Copeland rebuilt Connect+ on Azure

Copeland is best known for the hardware that keeps modern life running. Its scroll compressors and HVACR technologies quietly heat and cool buildings and help protect temperature-sensitive goods in supermarkets, national retail chains, and other industries. But inside the company, a much smaller team operates with a different mandate. In Software Solutions, engineers build and run cloud platforms that monitor, control, and analyze equipment in the field. The work looks far more like a modern SaaS operation than a traditional manufacturing function.

One of those platforms is Connect+, which Copeland uses to monitor and control refrigeration controllers in grocery and large-format retail environments where uptime directly affects food safety and operations. As Brian Haggard, Technical Director for Software Solutions at Copeland, puts it, Connect+ supports “the controllers that you see in big box retailers,” including “those long aisles of frozen and refrigerated food.”

When Copeland became a standalone company following a divestiture from Emerson Electric, the team faced a hard deadline. Connect+ was running in Emerson’s Global Data Center, and that environment was being shut down. “The entire thing was being sunset,” Haggard explains. “We had to move.”

Copeland did more than relocate infrastructure. The company used the transition to modernize Connect+ and establish an operating model built for scale, security, and reliability with Azure. The effort included migrating the Connect+ customer environment and application workloads from on-premises operations to Azure, followed by a broader Phase 2 modernization initiative known internally as Connect+ 2.0.

Azure Data Box for the win

“We chose to use Azure Data Box because it provided a simple migration path for all the servers,” says Vijay Somanchi, Global Head of Alliances and Partnerships at R Systems, the technology services firm Copeland partnered with to execute the migration to Azure and support the subsequent modernization of Connect+.

Azure Data Box is a Microsoft service designed to move large datasets to Azure using secure physical appliances when network-based migration is not feasible. “Using Data Box, we copied everything and then shipped it to Azure,” Somanchi says. In this case, the scale was substantial. The team migrated “more than 300 terabytes of data,” including both structured databases and unstructured files, and did so “without disrupting operations.”

“Azure Data Box helped us keep our critical systems online during the migration while securely transferring the data to Azure,” Somanchi concludes, “Because we were able to bring it over without changing its existing structure, Copeland maintained business continuity during the transition and after the migration was complete.”

Building Connect+ 2.0 on Azure

In all, the Connect+ transition involved migrating more than 100 servers, significant data volumes, and complex network configurations from the legacy Global Data Center to Azure. The objective was not just relocation, but modernization. Copeland wanted a foundation that would support easier deployments, lower maintenance overhead, and repeatable operations.

Haggard points to a fundamental change in how the platform is built and managed. “We have migrated to GitHub Actions and infrastructure as code using Bicep,” he details. “It is night and day difference in just the way these things are managed.”

At the application layer, the team used Azure App Service and Azure SQL Managed Instance to modernize Connect+. As Haggard explains, “The team leveraged Azure App Services and Azure Managed SQL Instances to modernize the Connect+ platform. These changes resulted in easier deployment of new Connect+ instances and lower maintenance of existing instances. The team also automated much of the deployment of Connect+ through Bicep templates which further improved the repeatability of deployments.”

The shift also changed day-to-day operations. Before the migration, supporting Connect+ “used to require multiple different teams,” Haggard says. After the move, “it’s now managed by a single DevOps team, which is far more efficient.”

The result is a team that increasingly operates like a SaaS provider rather than a traditional manufacturing IT function. “Within Copeland, we have this lean software solutions group doing modern cloud, IoT, data science, and analytics work,” Haggard says with pride. “We do things you’d typically associate with a technology company, but with a much smaller headcount than you might expect.”

Security and connectivity at scale

As the platform modernized, the team also had to address the security and connectivity challenges of operating Connect+ at scale. Connect+ depends heavily on VPNs between customer environments and the platform. Transitioning customers off the legacy environment required carefully coordinated VPN cutovers while maintaining uninterrupted communication between Connect+ and the in-store controllers it manages.

According to Haggard, “We were concerned about whether we were going to meet the deadlines to move all the customers over. Because most customer connections relied on those VPN links, each transition had to be sequenced precisely to avoid service disruption.”

On the security side, Copeland standardized its network architecture in Azure around Palo Alto, aligning with a broader company-wide directive for networking and network security.

The pace of releases and onboarding

The modernization effort reshaped both the operating model and delivery cadence. Moving to infrastructure as code and GitHub-based automation fundamentally changed how Connect+ is released and managed.

“We used to do releases only twice a year of Connect+,” Haggard states. “Our cadence right now is we’re doing roughly one a month.” While monthly releases are more incremental, he adds that “smaller, more incremental releases are a far better way to do things these days.” That shift reduced risk and made changes easier for customers to absorb.

Automation also accelerated onboarding by removing one of the biggest operational bottlenecks in the sales process. In Haggard’s assessment, provisioning used to be “the long pole in the tent in the sales channel,” but that is no longer true. “We are able to keep pace with our customers, which gets us to collaborative solutions at a record pace.”

Gains in speed, scale, and focus

Copeland saw clear operational improvements following the move to Azure. The platform now supports roughly 40,000 sites with 99.9% uptime. Automation reduced onboarding time for customers from weeks to hours. The team migrated roughly 300 terabytes of data while maintaining business continuity.

Cost efficiency improved as well. Haggard offers a direct comparison to the previous environment. “Our overall cloud spend just from the migration itself, we saw a 20% savings,” he says.

Some of the most important outcomes are less visible in metrics. During the transition, the team carried significant support overhead as customers were moved and stabilized, but over time that burden eased. R Systems, Haggard says, “helped us focus on reducing the support overhead… to a reasonable level where they could think about what’s next for the product and the platform.”

Laying the groundwork for what comes next

Copeland is now exploring new capabilities atop the platform. Haggard points to an upcoming AI initiative tied to Connect+, describing it as “an AI that’s been trained on our user manuals and related to operating the platform.” The team is “using Azure’s LLM services to make it happen,” he says.

The transition to Azure became an opportunity to rethink how Connect+ is deployed, operated, and continuously improved—not just a migration under deadline pressure. As Haggard sums it up, “Getting everything over to Azure and getting automation around things has made night and day differences around just how we’re able to grow and evolve the Connect+ platform. Not too shabby for a tiny DevOps team at a much bigger manufacturing company.” This foundation enables Copeland’s small software team to scale innovation across a global manufacturing business.

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