A 35-person regional accounting and advisory firm in Morris County, New Jersey — serving SMBs, real estate investors, and family offices with tax, audit, and financial advisory services.
Staff migrated to Microsoft 365 in under 2 weeks with zero data loss
Billable hours lost during the migration cutover
Reduction in monthly IT infrastructure costs vs. legacy on-premise setup
Time to full cloud-first workflow adoption across all departments
THE CHALLENGE
The firm had operated on legacy server infrastructure for over a decade — a physical file server in the back office, an aging on-premise Exchange installation, and a patchwork of shared drives that different team members had organized independently. The setup worked until it didn’t. Remote access during tax season required a clunky VPN. The server had failed once in two years, costing a half-day of billing. Backup ran nightly to an external drive that no one had actually tested for restoration.
The partners knew a cloud migration was inevitable, but they’d heard stories about firms losing data or disrupting operations mid-engagement. Their concern wasn’t whether to migrate — it was whether they could do it without a war story to tell afterward. With two partners managing 400+ client engagements per year, any window with zero downtime tolerance felt impossibly small.
WHAT SOLVED IT DID
SharePoint & File Migration
We inventoried the entire file server — what was actively used, what was archived, and what was accumulating. A SharePoint migration plan preserved the firm’s existing folder hierarchy while introducing proper document libraries and permission sets for each department. No files were lost, no folder structures were disrupted.
Microsoft 365 & Exchange Migration
The Exchange migration ran over a single weekend, with a two-week parallel period where both systems received mail — eliminating any risk of dropped communications. Users transitioned without noticing a cutover because there was nothing to notice.
Endpoint Management & Security
Intune was deployed for endpoint management — every laptop and desktop enrolled under a single console for patch management, security policy enforcement, and remote wipe capability. MFA was enforced across all accounts at rollout.
Infrastructure Decommission
After migration, the physical server was decommissioned entirely. The legacy VPN was replaced with native Microsoft 365 access. The firm’s IT costs dropped 40% month over month, and they now operate with no single point of failure in their environment.
The Results
- Physical file server and on-premise Exchange decommissioned — zero legacy dependencies remaining
- 35 users migrated to Microsoft 365 with zero lost email or file data
- SharePoint document libraries structured by department with proper access controls
- Intune-managed endpoints replace manual patching — every device under centralized policy enforcement
- Remote access works natively via Microsoft 365 — no VPN required for standard work
- Monthly IT infrastructure costs reduced by 40% vs. legacy server and licensing overhead
