A Case Study on a Secure and Efficient SharePoint Migration

Background:

Our client, a GTA-based paper manufacturer, chose SharePoint as the platform for their intranet in 2007. It has satisfied their needs for many years and included the necessary features to build and maintain their sites and content collections. Approximately 1000 users have access to this intranet, and over the years they built significant private content across 130 sites. Our client recognized the need to update their SharePoint and Windows Server 2003 platform to a fully supported environment and retained MRS to undertake this project.

Challenge:

SharePoint 2007 to 2013 upgrade projects are, by their very nature, challenging since there is no single tool to fully automate this migration process.

Our client had built significant custom content within their intranet platform and incorporated a wealth of customized features peculiar to their business requirements. All these features and customizations needed to be carried forward to the 2013 environment and had to perform exactly as they did in SP 2007. Furthermore, intranet uptime was a critical requirement.

Due to the size and unique client requirements, M.R.S. needed to deploy a team of SharePoint specialists well versed in Migration, Intranet Deployment and Custom Solution delivery amongst other skill sets.

Solution:

MRS deployed SharePoint Foundation 2013 which offers basic site creation and content management features, much similar to their original 2007 edition. Once we set up the new environment we undertook the content migration process.

After a through analysis of the available migration tools sets, we concluded that the most efficient approach would be to use Metalogix, a third-party migration tool. M.R.S. was responsible for migrating all SharePoint 2007 content to the new 2013 environment. This included upgrading all workflows, web parts and client developed custom solutions to the new Visual Studio 2013 platform and .NET 4.5 framework.

Benefits:

As part of our Migration project, M.R.S. also upgraded the client’s existing intranet system and associated solutions without losing any up-time. Furthermore, we added significant and powerful new features and updated the overall look-and-feel of the environment.

Our collective efforts ensured a smooth migration onto a fully supported Microsoft platform. We were subsequently retained to undertake follow-on projects to build new customized business solutions to further enhance our client’s ROI.