The problem
FEMA relied on a SharePoint 2007 intranet as the daily collaboration hub for a distributed workforce responding to disasters and coordinating across regions. Leadership needed to move to SharePoint 2010 before support and security exposure became unacceptable—but the intranet could not go dark. Any extended outage would disrupt field coordination, policy publication, and internal communications for more than 12,000 users.
Initial state
OWCER started with a structured inventory of what actually ran in production—not a theoretical target architecture.
- Scale and criticality — enterprise intranet serving 12,000+ users across headquarters and field operations; always-on expectation with no maintenance window long enough for a big-bang cutover
- Platform end of life — SharePoint 2007 farm with accumulated site collections, customizations, and web parts that had to be validated on SharePoint 2010, not simply copied
- Content and permissions complexity — years of departmental sites, document libraries, and inherited permissions that had to migrate without breaking access for emergency-response teams
- Federal operating constraints — change control, security review, and rollback requirements typical of large agency programs; migration sequencing had to align with IT operations, not override them
Our approach
- Discover & inventory — mapped site collections, customizations, and integration touchpoints; prioritized what had to move in phase one vs. what could be retired or rebuilt
- Parallel target environment — stood up SharePoint 2010 infrastructure and rehearsed content migration paths before any production cutover
- Phased migration with validation — moved content and configurations in waves with user acceptance checks; corrected permission and web-part issues in the target farm before redirecting traffic
- Zero-downtime cutover — coordinated DNS, load balancing, and final sync so users experienced continuous access through the transition window
- Hypercare & stabilization — post-cutover support for search, navigation, and broken customizations so the intranet was usable on day one, not merely “technically migrated”
The same discipline—inventory first, phased execution, measurable finish line—underpins OWCER’s cloud and platform migration work today, including information governance for agencies modernizing collaboration estates.
Outcomes
- Zero downtime — intranet remained available to 12,000+ users through the SharePoint 2007 to 2010 transition
- Supported platform — FEMA moved off end-of-life SharePoint 2007 onto SharePoint 2010 with customizations and permissions validated in the target environment
- Reduced migration risk — phased waves and rehearsal cutovers gave IT and program leadership confidence before each production redirect
- Operational continuity — field and headquarters staff kept using the intranet for coordination without a disruptive freeze period
“We could not afford a migration that took the intranet offline—not with the scale of users and the mission we support. The phased approach and zero-downtime cutover let us modernize the platform without asking the organization to pause.”
All case studies · Client testimonials · GCCH platform case study · Enterprise experience · Cloud migration services · Information governance
