A multi-billion dollar engineering and construction firm had been struggling with usage of Microsoft SharePoint for enterprise content across its acquired companies using multiple non-uniform versions and instances. To expand into new markets and territories, the firm acquired several companies. These companies also used SharePoint across intranets and extranets. The presence of various versions and instances of SharePoint quickly became expensive, frustrating, and time-consuming.

Hexon performed a comprehensive assessment of all companies to learn what was in place and how each deployment was used. Ultimately it was discovered that the installation contained three (3) SharePoint farms, six (6) web applications, 800+ site collections, and over nine (9) terabytes of content spread across 300 SQL databases. The most significant challenge was cost. SharePoint migration tools are typically priced per gigabyte, which increases licensing and migration tools. Hexon identified that the database attaches method could be used to perform the entire upgrade at a fraction of the cost. Hexon designed a comprehensive PowerShell framework where all project activities were chained together in a logical fashion. The framework was capable of testing the content databases, programmatically fixing issues, and attaching them to their respective target web applications and bringing the sites online. The framework was able to run in a distributed manner across all the web frontend servers of the target SharePoint farm so that it was possible to test, upgrade, and attach several databases at the same time. Hexon was able to streamline and automate the entire migration process within a span of 20 weeks. The process was completed faster and at a fraction of the cost that was originally allocated to the project.