Microsoft has acquired Movere, a cloud-migration specialist, for an undisclosed fee.

The Seattle-based company will add its expertise in public cloud business transitions to Azure as Microsoft look to continue to grow its partner ecosystem.

Movere, formerly known as Unified Logic, launched in 2008 as a consulting company, moved into the cloud migration space after undergoing one itself.

«On our journey to cloud, we made mistakes that cost us valuable time and resources that we didn’t have,» CEO Kristin Ireland said in a blog post. «As we spread our wings in the cloud, we realised the cloud was the embodiment of Movere.»

From there, the company became a vehicle for digital transformation, and crucially, of interest to Microsoft.

«There is an enormous amount of energy and enthusiasm about the possibilities for what Movere and Microsoft can do together to continue to bring deeper value (and data!) to customers and partners alike,» Ireland added.

Microsoft has firmly established itself as the number two in the cloud infrastructure market. The tech giant said it was committed to providing its customers with a «comprehensive experience» for migrating their existing applications and infrastructure to Azure.

«Movere’s innovative discovery and assessment capabilities will complement Azure Migrate and our integrated partner solutions, making migration an easier process for our customers,» said Jeremy Winter, partner director for Azure.

«We believe that successful cloud migrations enable business transformation and this acquisition underscores our investments to make that happen.»

This is the third Azure-based acquisition in recent months; in July, Microsoft snapped up BlueTalon, a software company that focuses on data-centric security and hybrid data environments. A month later, it acquired jClarity, a software company that specialises in Java installations.

While it still trails behind AWS, Microsoft’s cloud business is growing fast. The company reported Azure revenue grew 64% in the last quarter, while sales of AWS rose by 37%.