Azure Landing Zones
An Azure landing zone is a pre-configured, governed cloud environment — identity, network, security, policy, and monitoring set up as code — into which application teams can deploy workloads safely from day one. It is the 'Ready' phase of the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF).
The Cost of Skipping the Foundation
Enterprises that skip the landing zone all tell the same story two years later: dozens of subscriptions created ad hoc, each with its own network design, inconsistent security baselines, no central logging. Retrofitting governance onto a live estate costs multiples of building it first. The landing zone inverts this: governance is the paved road, not the toll gate. Teams get self-service subscriptions that are secure by default.
What a Landing Zone Contains
Following CAF enterprise-scale design areas:
Identity
Entra ID integration, role-based access with least privilege, privileged identity management for admin roles.
Management Hierarchy
A structure (platform / landing zones / sandbox) that policies attach to, so every new subscription inherits the rules automatically.
Network Topology
Hub-and-spoke with centralized firewalling, private DNS, and ExpressRoute/VPN to on-premises.
Policy as Code
Azure Policy enforcing encryption, allowed regions, required tags, and denied risky configurations.
Security Baseline
Microsoft Defender for Cloud, centralized Log Analytics, Sentinel for SIEM.
Automation
Everything above defined in Bicep/Terraform, deployed through pipelines. The platform itself is a version-controlled product.
Reference Architecture
Build Plan: Foundation in 6-8 Weeks
Design Decisions
The ~20 CAF design decisions (hierarchy, network topology, identity model) made in workshops with your architects, documented as ADRs.
Deploy Core
Management groups, policies, hub network, logging — from our tested Bicep/Terraform modules, adapted to your decisions.
First Workload Lands
A real application migrates in, proving the platform and hardening the subscription-vending process.
Evolution
Platform evolves as a product with a backlog — new policies, additional regions, AI workload patterns.
Frequently Asked Questions
We already have workloads in Azure — is it too late?
No. We build the target landing zone alongside and migrate subscriptions into the hierarchy incrementally — a governance strangler pattern.
Do small organizations need this?
A scaled-down version, yes. Even a 'landing zone light' (policy baseline, one hub, central logging) prevents the sprawl that becomes expensive later. The architecture scales down gracefully.
Terraform or Bicep?
Both are first-class. We choose based on your team's existing skills and multi-cloud ambitions — the design decisions matter far more than the tool.
Build on Solid Ground
Our team has designed landing zones for regulated DACH enterprises and fast-growing businesses alike. Book a landing zone design workshop and receive your architecture decision record set and deployment plan.
Book Design Workshop