For the past decade, Azure DevOps has powered software development at Microsoft, supporting some of our largest repositories and most complex engineering workflows across Azure Repos, Boards, and Pipelines.
Software development is being reshaped by AI, and where code lives now have a direct impact on how much value organizations can capture. For teams that want to take full advantage of AI-native development, repository location is becoming a strategic decision.
Azure DevOps and GitHub product teams have spent the past few years building the integration, migration, and enterprise-readiness capabilities needed to give organizations on Azure Repos a path to unlock the full value of GitHub’s latest agentic capabilities. That includes tighter Azure Boards and Azure Pipelines integration with GitHub repositories, purpose-built migration tooling like GitHub Enterprise Importer (GEI) and Enterprise Live Migrator (ELM), and the availability of GitHub data residency. As these capabilities came together, teams across Microsoft using Azure DevOps began actively exploring what it looks like to move repositories to GitHub while continuing to use Azure Boards and Azure Pipelines where those workflows remain critical. At Build 2026, we’re sharing what that looks like in practice: how we’re migrating, what we’ve learned, and what it means for organizations evaluating their own path forward.
Migrating at Microsoft scale with less engineering overhead
The Copilot, Agents, and Platforms (CAP) organization offers a useful view into what migration looks like at Microsoft scale. Responsible for Copilot products and other business and industry services, CAP operates roughly 4,000 active repositories across 53 Azure DevOps organizations. At that scale, it would be easy to assume migration requires a large, centralized team and months of focused engineering effort. CAP’s experience suggests otherwise.
With two dedicated engineering leads and a small bench of engineers supporting execution, CAP has migrated more than 80% of its in-scope repositories and 45% of its developers to GitHub. That translates to over 1,600 repositories and 3,100 developers over the past six months, including large repositories that support critical services such as Dynamics CRM and omnichannel CRM.
Some of CAP’s most complex repositories remain on Azure DevOps today, but the organization expects tools like Enterprise Live Migrator (ELM) to help accelerate the next phase, including more complex mono repos. For organizations planning a similar journey, that matters: large-scale migration is becoming more practical without requiring teams to pause ongoing development.
Why migrate now: AI is changing the calculus
By moving repositories to GitHub, CAP engineers gain earlier access to the latest AI capabilities as they become available. In practice, that means faster access to innovations such as GitHub Copilot Coding Agent, Code Review, Copilot Chat, and other agentic capabilities that are increasingly shaping how software is built and maintained.
The value is not just in the models themselves, but in where those capabilities show up. Across tools such as VS Code, Visual Studio, the GitHub Copilot CLI, GitHub Mobile, and the GitHub app, engineers can work with agents and AI assistance in the flow of day-to-day development rather than as a disconnected add-on.
CAP engineers are already running agentic workflows across migrated repositories, creating what is effectively a digital workforce of agents working alongside developers. These workflows can scan repositories for security, performance, and governance issues, open GitHub Issues, and route remediation to GitHub Copilot Coding Agent, including in Windows environments using Windows Runners.
Move repositories to GitHub while preserving critical DevOps workflows
For CAP, migration is as much about what stays as what moves. GitHub repositories are key to unlocking the latest AI and agentic capabilities, while Azure Boards and Azure Pipelines continue to support critical planning and CI/CD workflows.
To support this hybrid model, CAP uses the Azure Pipelines GitHub app to connect existing pipelines to migrated repositories and AB# syntax to link GitHub pull requests with Azure Boards work items.
Building on that foundation, CAP is also scaling newer workflows. By using GitHub runners with GitHub, teams can run Copilot agents across both Linux and Windows environments, enabling agent-driven workflows to operate consistently across a hybrid platform.
What changes after migration
Tools like GEI and ELM help move repositories quickly, but for many organizations the bigger question is what day-to-day work looks like after the move. For teams coming from Azure DevOps, GitHub can require some adjustment, especially when customization shifts away from UI extensions and toward APIs, Actions, and integrations.
Within CAP, developers with prior GitHub experience have helped ease that transition by sharing best practices and helping newer users adopt the platform. The organization’s hybrid approach reduces friction further by preserving familiar Azure Boards and Azure Pipelines workflows where they still add value.
GitHub also brings practical benefits beyond AI. Consolidating into a single GitHub organization improves code discovery across teams, reducing the fragmentation that came with work spread across 53 separate Azure DevOps organizations. Its multi-surface experience also makes it easier for developers to stay productive across the day, whether they are reviewing pull requests on mobile, working in the CLI, or using GitHub from the desktop.
Lessons for organizations evaluating their own path
Migration at this scale comes with tradeoffs, but it also creates meaningful opportunity. CAP’s experience highlights a few practical lessons for organizations evaluating their own path:
- Be deliberate about which repositories move first: CAP has already migrated more than 70% of its active, in-scope repositories, but many of the largest and most complex repositories remain on Azure DevOps. Tools like GEI and ELM can expand what is possible, but sequencing still matters.
- A hybrid approach can reduce disruption: Pairing GitHub repositories with Azure Boards and Azure Pipelines can make migration more manageable by preserving critical workflows while teams adapt to a new platform.
- Agentic capabilities are a major driver of value: Tools like GitHub Copilot Coding Agent, Code Review, and agentic workflows are changing how work gets done. For CAP, access to those capabilities is a primary reason to move repositories to GitHub. • The platform shift brings additional benefits: Beyond AI, consolidating on GitHub improves code discovery, reduces organizational sprawl, and gives developers more flexibility through a multi-surface experience.
CAP is not alone in this journey. Other teams across Microsoft are following their own migration paths, reinforcing that this is broader than a single organization or use case. There is still work ahead, but the direction is becoming clearer: for teams that want to take full advantage of AI-powered software development, moving repositories to GitHub is increasingly becoming an important step. Microsoft’s early experience shows that this can be done incrementally, at enterprise scale, and without forcing organizations to abandon critical DevOps workflows overnight. Those lessons are already shaping what comes next inside Microsoft, and they can help other organizations make more informed decisions about their own path forward.
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