How a London-based charity and Helsinki-based Azure experts became inseparable

Already it's out there, no reason to pretend, there is a feeling between Stewardship and Mallow. We know, because of Stewardship's CTO Brett Mickelburgh put it out there in LinkedIn, celebrating the step shifting from hosting based on older on-prem technologies into Microsoft Azure cloud ecosystem.

"Mallow and Saratoga have supported us significantly. Very few partners get as close to your team as these two." — Brett Mickelburgh

Saratoga is Stewardship's software development partner from Cape Town and has long supported the organization's digital product. This transformation became a three-party collaboration between Stewardship, Saratoga, and Mallow.

Stewardship is a Christian charity founded in 1906. It distributes over a hundred million pounds yearly to around 6,000 charities and churches. At the center is its giving software, the most critical system in the organization, built and maintained with Saratoga. The system was proven and reliable, but based on on-prem technology. Stewardship decided to modernize its application estate and move this core system to Azure.

Stewardship needed to punch above its weight and build a stronger foundation with fewer resources. Azure offered that path.

Stewardship team met Mallow's Principal Architect Teemu Tapanila few years back in London. Tapanila was freelancing for his previous employer. Together, they built the first blocks for Stewardship's giving system in Azure technologies.

"As soon as we had a chance to get Teemu back with Mallow, we took it. We quickly realized almost everything had to be restarted, but the end result was better." — Jonathan Ward

Tapanila emphasises that the commission was challenging, because they had to transfer an already existing complex software system in Azure, instead of constructing everything from zero.

The work lasted over a year, and the South African, Finnish, and British teams aligned around one goal: make Stewardship's core engine run smoothly in Azure.

And gracefully it runs. One of the key benefits for Azure technologies compared to on-prem technologies is the agility and easiness to run product releases.

"With our previous setup, releases could take 4 to 16 weeks. With Azure we were live in under a week." — Jonathan Ward

Stewardship's enterprise architect Grant Owens enjoyed Mallow's culture of sharing information and the honesty in consulting.

"Mallow is not a hit-and-run consultancy. They share knowledge and don't oversell." — Grant Owens

Mallow helped Stewardship make pragmatic decisions, reduce unnecessary spend, and build internal confidence in Azure operations and governance.

The good feeling travels in both directions. Tapanila feels, that Stewardship is a special partnership, also because of the organisation's non-profit nature.

What We Achieved

• Migrated a critical giving platform from on-prem to Azure.
• Reduced release lead time from weeks to days.
• Built stronger in-house capability in Azure operations and DevOps.

"It feels good to contribute to work with clear social impact." — Teemu Tapanila

Now that the giving system is up and running in the Azure-cloud, Stewardship and Mallow are looking forward to the future.

"We want Mallow as a long-term partner." — Grant Owens