Insights
MAKONIS team · · 7 min read
In short: An Azure landing zone is the prepared foundation of an Azure environment: identities, networking, governance rules and security baselines are set up properly once, before the first workloads move. It prevents sprawl, makes costs traceable and is the prerequisite for a secure cloud migration.
Book a free callIn the Cloud Adoption Framework, Microsoft describes the landing zone as an environment preconfigured according to fixed design principles. Instead of setting up every subscription individually, you define centrally how subscriptions, networks, permissions and policies look.
New applications therefore land in a frame that already meets security and compliance requirements.
Identity and access: Entra ID, a least-privilege role model, time-limited privileged access.
Resource organisation: management groups and subscriptions by environment or business unit, consistent naming and tags.
Networking: hub-and-spoke or Virtual WAN, central firewall, private endpoints and DNS.
Governance and security: Azure Policy, Defender for Cloud, central logging, budgets and cost alerts.
1. Gather requirements: regulation, existing networks, identity sources, planned workloads.
2. Define and document the target architecture.
3. Implement the landing zone as infrastructure as code (e.g. Bicep or Terraform) so it is reproducible and auditable.
4. Migrate a pilot workload, incorporate lessons learned, then move further applications in waves.
The landing zone is clicked together in the portal and cannot be traced later.
Policies are introduced only after the migration, so existing resources need costly corrections.
Cost ownership is unclear, tags are missing, and nobody knows which department causes which costs.
The role model is too generous; many people hold permanent owner rights.
We design and build landing zones as code, review existing environments against Microsoft's recommendations and can take over day-to-day operations. For companies preparing a move we offer a fixed-price assessment with migration plan for €14,900.
Yes, at a smaller scale. Even with few workloads a clear role model, policies and cost control pay off, because later corrections are much more expensive.
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