Our mission is to make PostgreSQL the most performant, scalable, and enterprise-ready open database platform available. With Azure Database for PostgreSQL and the newly introduced Azure HorizonDB, we’re delivering on that vision.

In today’s digital economy, business leaders face a relentless challenge: how to deliver innovation, scale, and resilience without spiraling costs or compromising performance. At the heart of this challenge lies data infrastructure, which is often one of the most critical and most constrained layers of the enterprise stack.

At Microsoft, we’ve seen firsthand how legacy systems, particularly on-premises databases like Oracle, can become a bottleneck to progress. These systems are expensive to maintain, difficult to scale, and increasingly out of step with the agility modern organizations require. But we also understand that migration is not a trivial decision. Concerns about downtime, compatibility, security, and retraining are real.

That’s why we’ve spent the last several years investing in PostgreSQL. Our mission is to make PostgreSQL the most performant, scalable, and enterprise-ready open database platform available. With Azure Database for PostgreSQL and the newly introduced Azure HorizonDB, we’re delivering on that vision.

The cost of standing still

Staying on legacy infrastructure might feel like a safe choice, but it’s rarely the best one. The costs of maintaining aging on-premises databases are rising. Hardware refresh cycles, escalating licensing fees, and the need for niche expertise all add up. Organizations can spend most of their IT budgets and time just maintaining existing systems, leaving little room for innovation.

Some Oracle customers have cited rising licensing costs, performance bottlenecks, and scalability limits as major pain points. Others have reported high support costs and a need for advanced AI capabilities as primary reasons for considering a move away from Oracle databases.

But migration comes with its own set of challenges. What if your applications aren’t compatible with a new platform? What if your team lacks the skills to manage a new system? What if performance suffers or what if something breaks? These are valid concerns, and they are precisely the challenges we’ve engineered PostgreSQL on Azure to solve.

Apollo Hospitals: A case study in transformation

Apollo Hospitals, one of Asia’s largest healthcare providers, faced these very questions. With more than 74 hospitals and over 10,000 beds, Apollo’s digital infrastructure is mission critical. Their in-house hospital information system, built on Oracle, was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Performance bottlenecks were impacting care delivery, and the cost of scaling was unsustainable.

Apollo Hospitals made the bold, strategic decision to migrate their databases to Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Their IT and development teams worked closely with Microsoft and their cloud partner to ensure a seamless transition. The results were transformative. Since the migration, Apollo has seen:

• 90% of transactions complete within five seconds, a significant leap in responsiveness for clinical systems.
• Uptime has improved to 99.95%, ensuring that critical hospital operations remain uninterrupted.
• Deployment timelines have dropped by 40%, allowing the organization to roll out new features and updates faster than ever before.

Perhaps most importantly, Apollo has achieved a 60% reduction in operational costs and a 3x improvement in overall system performance. Apollo’s story is a powerful example of what’s possible when you pair the right technology with the right migration strategy.

Smarter Oracle to PostgreSQL migrations with AI-assisted tooling

One of the biggest barriers to migration is the complexity of converting Oracle schemas, stored procedures, and application code. Enterprise applications often rely on thousands of stored procedures, functions, and application-side code (Java, .NET, etc.) built around Oracle-specific syntax. Manually rewriting and validating this code is time-consuming, error-prone, and expensive.

To address this, we introduced the AI-assisted Oracle-to-PostgreSQL migration tool, now available in preview as part of the PostgreSQL extension for Visual Studio Code. This tool is powered by GitHub Copilot and a multi-agent AI system that automates the end-to-end conversion process.

Oracle to PostgreSQL AI-assisted migration tool in action

The tool begins by analyzing Oracle schemas and stored procedures, converting them into PostgreSQL-compatible formats using intelligent pattern recognition and transformation logic. It doesn’t stop at the database layer. It also scans application code, such as Java or .NET, and updates database drivers, rewrites SQL queries, and modifies stored procedure calls to align with PostgreSQL syntax. The tool generates automated unit tests to validate the converted logic and runs post-conversion validation in a scratch PostgreSQL environment to check for functional parity.

The tool uses a hybrid AI architecture with specialized agents for migration, validation, and documentation. It reduces manual effort and minimizes human error. The tool also produces side-by-side comparisons and detailed reports, giving teams the transparency and control they may need to trust the process. By embedding AI-assisted conversion directly into the PostgreSQL extension for VS Code, we’re meeting developers where they work. With GitHub Copilot integration, schema conversion, code refactoring, and validation become part of the same inner loop as code editing and CI/CD. The result is a streamlined, intelligent workflow that reduces friction and accelerates delivery.

Post-migration enterprise-grade performance, scale, and security

PostgreSQL on Azure is more than a cost-effective alternative to legacy systems. With Azure Database for PostgreSQL, and the new Azure HorizonDB service, a move to Azure provides high-performance, scale, and security built and optimized for your most business-critical enterprise workloads.

Azure Database for PostgreSQL continuing innovation

With the introduction of v6-series compute SKUs, customers can now scale vertically up to 192 vCores. This is ideal for high-throughput transactional workloads and complex analytical queries. For workloads that require horizontal scaling, elastic clusters powered by the open-source Citus extension enable distributed PostgreSQL deployments across multiple nodes. This architecture supports multi-tenant SaaS applications, IoT platforms, and large-scale analytics with ease.

Storage performance in Azure Database for PostgreSQL has also taken a leap forward. SSD v2 storage delivers high IOPS and low latency, ensuring that even the most demanding workloads run smoothly. Integrated monitoring and tuning tools like Azure Monitor provide real-time insights and automated optimization, helping teams maintain peak performance without manual intervention.

As always, security remains a top priority. Azure Database for PostgreSQL includes enterprise-grade protections such as Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Entra ID integration, private endpoints, confidential compute SKUs, and end-to-end encryption. These features help organizations meet compliance requirements and safeguard sensitive data.

And because PostgreSQL is open source, there are no licensing fees. It’s one of the most widely used databases in the world, with a vibrant community and deep Microsoft support.

Azure HorizonDB: The future of PostgreSQL at scale

For organizations with extreme performance and scale requirements, we’ve introduced Azure HorizonDB, which is a new, cloud-native PostgreSQL service built for the most demanding workloads. Currently in private preview, Azure HorizonDB supports up to 3,072 vCores and 128 TB of auto-scaling storage. It delivers sub-millisecond multi-zone commit latencies and up to 3x higher throughput than self-managed PostgreSQL. Azure HorizonDB also builds on the AI and agentic capabilities of Azure Database for PostgreSQL with built-in AI model management and DiskANN advanced filtering capabilities, making it ideal for next-generation applications that require real-time analytics and intelligent data processing.

Because Azure HorizonDB is PostgreSQL-compatible, organizations can start with Azure Database for PostgreSQL today and move to Azure HorizonDB if the need arises. This allows for a smooth transition path without the need for replatforming or rewriting applications.

Open source, engineered for the enterprise

Microsoft is proud to be one of the top corporate contributors to the PostgreSQL project. Our engineering teams have upstreamed key innovations, and we’re committed to continuing this work so that PostgreSQL remains the most capable and trusted open-source database for the cloud era.

We believe that open-source data platforms like PostgreSQL are foundational to the next generation of intelligent applications. Our goal is to make PostgreSQL not only accessible but exceptional for enterprise workloads. That means investing in performance, security, developer experience, and ecosystem integration.

The payoff: Innovation, agility, and confidence

Migrating to PostgreSQL on Azure isn’t just about fixing what’s broken. It’s also about unlocking what’s next. Apollo Hospitals, as an example, is now exploring AI-powered clinical dashboards, real-time analytics with Microsoft Fabric, and containerized workloads with Azure Kubernetes Service. Their teams are more agile, their systems are more resilient, and their foundation is ready for the future. As Sridhar Yadla, Apollo’s General Manager, put it:

We’re no longer stuck reacting to problems. Now we’re thinking proactively and looking at how we can evolve.

That’s the power of PostgreSQL on Azure.

Ready to modernize?

If you’re considering a move from Oracle to PostgreSQL, we’ve built the tools, the platform, and the partner network to help you succeed.

Download our latest e-book and explore the Azure Database for PostgreSQL documentation to learn how to plan, execute, and accelerate your journey.