CDK Global modernizes automotive CRM on Azure SQL Managed Instance
For automotive retailers, most customer relationships don't begin and end with a vehicle purchase. A customer might browse inventory online, visit a dealership weeks later, return for service months after that, and eventually purchase another vehicle years down the road. Every interaction creates information that helps dealerships better understand their customers and build stronger relationships over time. Helping dealerships manage those relationships is at the core of the CDK CRM platform. CDK is a leading provider of cloud-based software to dealerships and OEMs across automotive and related industries in the US and Canada, helping facilitate more than $540 billion in annual automotive commerce. It gives dealership teams visibility into customer interactions with their products and services and creates continuity across the conversations that shape the buying journey. As customer expectations evolve, CDK continues to look for new ways to help dealerships work more efficiently, make better use of information, and adapt quickly to market changes. Supporting that next phase of innovation required a technology foundation that could grow alongside the business. Working with Microsoft, CDK evolved its CRM platform on Microsoft Azure and Azure SQL Managed Instance. The project included a large migration to Azure SQL Managed Instance and marked an important step in the future of the CRM experience. Transforming a business-critical system at scale The size of the project reflected how central the CRM platform is to CDK’s business. The environment supports a broad set of applications for dealership operations and relies on a robust data foundation to keep information flowing. Microsoft and CDK worked together to implement a cloud architecture built on Azure App Service and Azure SQL Managed Instance. Additional Azure services support application delivery, networking, and data movement across the architecture. The teams developed a Terraform-based infrastructure-as-code framework that standardizes how environments are deployed and managed. That foundation brings greater consistency to the development process. Engineering teams can work within environments that are configured in a predictable way, reducing the likelihood of unexpected differences between testing and production. The project also provided an opportunity to strengthen security and governance practices. CDK updated applications to use managed identities, reducing reliance on static credentials, and implemented Microsoft Entra ID authentication and private connectivity patterns that help secure access to critical resources. While dealership users may not see these changes directly, they help deliver the stability and security that customers expect from the platform. Preserving continuity while moving to the cloud As CDK evaluated its cloud strategy, the database layer became one of the most important decisions in the project. The CRM platform supports business-critical dealership operations throughout the day. Customer interactions, sales activity, and service records all depend on information moving quickly and reliably between systems. Any technology transformation would need to preserve that experience while creating a path to future growth. Azure SQL Managed Instance stood out because it offered a familiar SQL Server environment while reducing much of the operational overhead associated with managing database infrastructure. It also aligned well with CDK’s long-term goals around resiliency, scalability, and continuous innovation. Equally important, Azure SQL Managed Instance provided a migration path that worked with the realities of the CRM environment. “One of the reasons Azure SQL Managed Instance appealed to us was that it allowed us to innovate without redesigning the CRM platform from the ground up,” says Stan Leong, Vice President of Modern Retailing Engineering at CDK. “We could preserve compatibility with the applications our dealerships depend on while taking advantage of a fully managed cloud service.” Unlike some projects that can move applications gradually, the CDK CRM platform required a coordinated transition. The databases that support the platform are highly interconnected, which meant the company needed an approach that would allow the environment to move together while minimizing disruption for customers. To prepare for that transition, CDK and Microsoft used Azure SQL Managed Instance link to establish near real-time replication between environments. This allowed teams to begin validating the migration long before the production cutover. Engineers could confirm that data was flowing correctly, identify potential issues, and gain confidence in the process before dealerships were ever affected. The approach also gave CDK an added layer of flexibility during the transition period. Rather than making a one-way move, the company could maintain a rollback option while teams validated production operations in Azure. Because Azure SQL Managed Instance link kept environments synchronized, CDK retained the ability to fail back to its on-premises environment if needed while preserving continuity for dealership operations. After failing over to Azure, the company continued running with synchronized environments for more than four weeks, allowing teams to validate production workloads before completing the final cutover. Executing a migration measured in terabytes That preparation became especially important because the migration would take place during a single maintenance window. By establishing synchronization ahead of time, CDK was able to keep data aligned between environments before the failover to Azure. When migration time arrived, production data was already synchronized in Azure, allowing the maintenance event to focus on transitioning operations rather than moving large volumes of data for the first time. Planning and architecture work that led to the migration spanned several months. The final migration preparation and validation effort was completed in just six weeks, with engineers working together to test migration scenarios, optimize replication performance, and validate data consistency ahead of production. CDK migrated more than 1,000 databases and hundreds of terabytes of data to Azure SQL Managed Instance. The environment now processes billions of database queries every day. The failover to Azure was completed during a single weekend with minimal failover time and no data loss. In many cases, database failovers completed in seconds, with most finishing within minutes. Microsoft engineering, product, support, and field teams remained engaged throughout the event, working alongside CDK to monitor the transition and address issues in real time. “This was one of the most significant technology initiatives we’ve undertaken for our CRM platform,” says Leong. “Working closely with Microsoft, we migrated more than 1,000 databases to Azure SQL Managed Instance while supporting dealerships throughout the process. The collaboration between our teams helped us execute the transition with minimal disruption to customers.” Strengthening reliability for dealership operations Delivering more than a new cloud environment, the migration also gave CDK an opportunity to evolve the CRM platform operations. As part of this effort, CDK implemented resilience architecture built on Azure. The design incorporates Azure Front Door, geo-redundant storage, and Azure SQL Managed Instance failover capabilities, allowing the company to maintain continuity when unexpected disruptions occur. These improvements rarely attract attention when everything is working as expected, but they help the platform remain available when it matters most. Since the migration, CDK has heard positive feedback from dealerships that report faster and more responsive application experiences. Preparing dealerships for what’s next With the CRM platform now running on Azure, CDK is focused on the next phase of its CRM strategy. Beyond supporting today’s dealership operations, the cloud-based foundation gives the company greater flexibility to introduce new functionality and continue advancing the platform over time. AI capabilities are already helping dealership employees surface relevant information at the right moment while reducing the effort required to complete routine tasks. And AI is accelerating software development and deployment, enabling engineering teams to deliver new capabilities more efficiently. CDK is also investing in new reporting experiences designed to make insights easier to access. Dealerships generate enormous amounts of data, but its value depends on how quickly users can find relevant information and act on it. The CRM migration has become an important reference point for future platform initiatives across the organization. By successfully moving a business-critical platform at this scale, CDK established a blueprint for future cloud initiatives. “The migration was an important milestone, but it’s really the starting point,” says Leong. “With Azure and Azure SQL Managed Instance, our teams can focus more energy on delivering new capabilities for dealerships while using AI to power experiences that help customers operate more efficiently.”
