Why Organizations Consider Moving from Azure to Atlantic.Net for HIPAA and SOC-Compliant Hosting

For years, hyperscale cloud providers like Microsoft Azure have been a common choice for organizations moving to the cloud, tempted by a wide-reaching global service and limitless scale.But for organizations handling sensitive data—especially in healthcare (HIPAA/HITECH), finance (SOC 2), and e-commerce (PCI)—that promise often comes with high costs, operational fragility, and high levels of complexity.

One of the problems with Hyperscale providers is that investing in a “do-it-all” platform means you can often end up doing it all yourself, especially when it comes to compliance hosting. Yes, the platform provided by Azure is very powerful, but it comes with a specific technical expertise requirement.This is where the conversation shifts, where organizations are increasingly moving from complex hyperscale environments to managed providers like Atlantic.Net. The reason is simple: they are trading in unpredictable, “do-it-yourself” compliance burden for a fully managed, audit-ready environment with transparent, predictable pricing.

Azure Compliance Hosting

For organizations bound by HIPAA, SOC 2, or PCI regulations, Azure presents two significant hurdles: technical complexity and financial complexity.

Technical Complexity

Microsoft has built Azure into a huge, reliable cloud platform, featuring over 200 services. However, one major issue is that you, the customer, is responsible for all the configuration, integration, and security. This is fine if you are a certified Azure Solutions Architect, but perhaps it’s more challenging for small and medium enterprises, considering the added costs.

Configuration Expertize

You are responsible for correctly configuring every virtual machine, storage account, firewall rule, and logging service to meet stringent audit standards.

• For HIPAA: It’s not enough to just use “HIPAA-eligible” services. You must manually configure Network Security Groups (NSGs) to segment ePHI data, implement Azure Key Vault for managing encryption keys, and set up Azure Monitor with Log Analytics workspaces to create an immutable audit trail of all access to protected data. A single misconfigured NSG rule (e.g., an “AllowAny” for RDP) or a gap in logging can breach HIPAA compliance.
• For SOC 2: An auditor will test you against the Trust Services Criteria (e.g., Security, Availability, Confidentiality). You must provide concrete evidence that your controls are working. In Azure, this means manually correlating logs from Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Azure Active Directory, and your application to prove you are monitoring for anomalies or managing vendor access. This is a full-time job.

Shared Responsibility

It’s easy to misunderstand Azure’s “shared responsibility” model. While Microsoft secures the physical data center, you are responsible for almost everything else.
In a typical IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) model, you are solely responsible for:

• Data: Securing it, encrypting it, controlling access.
• Application & Network: Patching operating systems, managing firewalls (NSGs), and configuring secure VNet-to-VNet connectivity.
• Access Management: Implementing strong Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and ensuring principles of least privilege.

A compliance failure in any of these areas is your failure, not Microsoft’s.

Billing Complexity

The second major pain point is cost. Azure’s pay-as-you-go model is flexible, but it often leads to financial unpredictability for high-compliance environments.

Unpredictable Egress & Transfer Fees

Were you planning on moving data to a disaster recovery site, sharing it with a partner, or even just downloading logs for analysis? It’s important to remember Egress charges. Egress (data-out) fees are hard to predict and can impact your monthly costs. Even data transfer between Azure regions for high availability can incur unexpected costs.

Configuration Sprawl

In a complex environment, it’s easy to spin up a resource (a premium SSD, a test VM, a public IP) for a temporary project and forget to decommission it. These “zombie assets” can drain your budget for months. Worse, choosing the wrong pricing tier (e.g., using “hot” storage for long-term archives) means you are constantly overpaying. Any easy way to fix this is to manage your infrastructure by code, but not everyone is a DevOps expert, and it’s easy for employees to do click-ops to test out new features.

Employee Costs

Managing a compliant Azure environment doesn’t just require an IT team; it may requires a team of Azure-certified specialists who are also experts in HIPAA or SOC 2 controls. This is a rare and expensive combination. The salary for a single senior cloud security engineer can easily exceed $150,000. For many organizations, this hidden “people cost” is far greater than the Azure bill itself.

The Atlantic.Net Alternative: Compliant, Managed, and Predictable

Organizations are moving to Atlantic.Net because we offer a fundamentally different approach. Instead of handing you a box of parts, we deliver a fully assembled, audited, and compliant solution. With 30 years in the industry, our model is built on partnership, not just a platform.

A Turnkey, Audit-Ready Environment

When you handle ePHI or financial data, “good enough” isn’t an option. Our solutions are not just “compliant-capable”; they are audited and certified.

• SOC 2 & SOC 3: Our data centers and hosting environments are SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 Type II certified. This provides verified, third-party proof of our security controls and operational effectiveness, which you can use in your own audits.
• HIPAA & HITECH: We are fully HIPAA and HITECH audited. We understand the critical importance of protecting patient data and will sign a comprehensive Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with you—a non-negotiable for healthcare. Our BAA covers the managed services we provide, not just the physical hardware.
• PCI-Compliant: For e-commerce and financial applications, we provide a secure, PCI-compliant environment to protect cardholder data.

True Managed Services—Not Just Support

This is the most significant difference. Instead of you managing the platform, we manage it for you. This is all included, not an expensive add-on. Our engineers become an extension of your team.
This includes:

• Fully Managed Firewalls & VPNs: We design, configure, and manage your firewall rules and secure VPN access.
• Intrusion Detection/Prevention (IDS/IPS): We proactively monitor network traffic 24/7 for malicious activity and policy violations—a key requirement for SOC 2.
• Encrypted Backups & Storage: Your data is encrypted at rest and in transit, with secure, off-site backups managed by us to protect against data loss or ransomware.
• 24x7x365 Expert Support: Our support isn’t a call center. You get 24/7 access to our U.S.-based engineers—the same people who manage our infrastructure—any time, day or night.

Transparent, Predictable Pricing

Our pricing is simple. We work with you to design a solution and provide a clear, all-inclusive monthly quote. That’s it.

• No Unexpected Fees: We include generous data transfer.
• No Confusing Tiers: We use high-performance SSD storage by default.
• No Bill Shock: You get a predictable operational expense, making budgeting easy and eliminating the financial anxiety of the hyperscale model.

At-a-Glance: Azure (DIY) vs. Atlantic.Net (Managed)

Migrating to Atlantic.Net

We’ve migrated a number of complex, high-compliance workloads. Our process is designed to be seamless, secure, and low-friction, managed by our experts at every step.
Best Migration Strategy:

1. Discovery & Compliance Mapping: Solution architects review your current environment, data, and application dependencies. Then they map your exact HIPAA, SOC 2, or PCI requirements to our audited controls.
2. Architecting the Solution: Design a dedicated, secure, and high-performance environment that mirrors or improves upon your current setup.
3. Phased, Low-Downtime Migration: Schedule the migration at your convenience. Using live replication tools, move your data and applications securely, minimizing or eliminating downtime.
4. Validation & Go-Live: Before the final cutover, test everything in a secure sandbox. Post-migration, validate all security controls, network policies, and backup jobs, and take initial compliance documentation for your records.

Why These Clients Moved to Atlantic.Net

While client names are confidential, these scenarios reflect the common challenges that drive organizations to migrate into Atlantic.Net cloud.

The Healthcare Tech Platform

A SaaS company provides a patient data management app for clinics. On a hyperscaler, their small development team spent nearly 30% of its time on infrastructure management and compliance documentation instead of building new features. They faced constant anxiety during audits, fearing a misconfigured logging rule.

• By moving to Atlantic.Net: They now operate on a fully managed, HIPAA-audited platform. Atlantic.Net handles the infrastructure, security monitoring, and backups. Their team is 100% focused on their product, and audits are now a simple “check-the-box” process using Atlantic.Net’s compliance reports.

The Legal Tech Firm

A legal tech firm specializing in e-discovery needed a SOC 2-compliant environment. Their Cloud bill was a moving target, fluctuating by thousands each month based on unpredictable data transfers during discovery.

• By moving to Atlantic.Net: They secured a SOC 2-certified environment with a fixed, predictable monthly cost. With data transfer included, they can now quote projects to their law firm clients with confidence, knowing their own cloud costs are static.

The E-commerce Business

A growing e-commerce company was preparing for its PCI audit on a big cloud. They realized their team lacked the specialized expertise to properly implement and document all the required network segmentation and access controls.

• By moving to Atlantic.Net: They migrated to a PCI-compliant managed environment. Atlantic.Net’s experts not only configured the solution but also provided the clear documentation needed to sail through their audit, saving them from the high cost of specialized consultants.

Stop Managing Complexity. Start Focusing on Your Business.

Azure is a great platform that is a great fit for large enterprise customers and those who enjoy the Windows experience. However, there is a growing audience for whom Azure is perhaps too complicated and too large an environment for their specific needs.

For Many clients it is sometimes difficult to understand the true cost of cloud with a large provider prior to adopting some of its services, and once embedded in their systems, far too much time was spent worrying about being compliant. That is why many small and medium businesses are choosing companies like Atlantic.Net that have built a compliance-ready platform that can be consumed from day one.

For organizations that need watertight compliance without the operational overhead and financial risk, a managed provider is the clear-headed choice.
Atlantic.Net offers a 30-year track record of stability, a robust global network of 8 data centers, and a clear, simple promise: We manage the cloud. We help you reach compliance. You focus on your business.

Ready to simplify your compliance? Contact our team today for a no-obligation consultation and see what a truly managed, audit-ready environment can do for you.