New Southern Energy’s Microsoft 365 environment, managed by a third-party MSP, had reached a level of complexity and cost that no longer served the business. Ongoing email spoofing issues remained unresolved, the legacy SharePoint structure had become unmanageable, and the organisation had no direct ownership of its own infrastructure.
The business needed a full security-first migration of 43 users and 4.53TB of data to Google Workspace — with a hard deadline driven by an end-of-month Microsoft renewal. Delaying meant paying for another year of an environment the business had already decided to exit. Every decision in the engagement was made with that clock in mind.
Project Details
A Forensic Migration in Four Sprints
The project was structured as four high-velocity sprints starting February 2 — treating the migration as a forensic cleanup to ensure legacy structural issues were not carried into the new environment.
Identity & Email Security
Configuration of all 43 user accounts and unified identity management on the nse.africa domain. Implementation of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC from day one to immediately close the spoofing issues that had persisted in the legacy environment.
Batch-and-Verify Data Migration
Forensic migration of 4.53TB of email history and file data using a pilot group of 10 users to validate security controls and folder permissions before full cutover — ensuring issues were caught before they affected the full team.
Clean-Slate Drive Architecture
Design and setup of a new Shared Drive structure and permissions model to replace the legacy SharePoint environment — deliberately structured to avoid carrying the old “structural sprawl” into the new platform.
Device Management & Hyper-Care
Endpoint management policies deployed across all Windows machines and mobile devices. Post-migration hyper-care support through the DNS cutover window to ensure business continuity and resolve any technical friction before the Microsoft tenant was decommissioned.
The Impact
All 43 users were migrated and fully operational on the nse.africa domain before the Microsoft renewal deadline — the legacy tenant decommissioned, the MSP dependency ended, and the business in full ownership of its own infrastructure for the first time.
- Migrated 4.53TB of email history and file data across 43 users with zero data loss, completing the full cutover ahead of the Microsoft renewal deadline and eliminating ongoing MSP costs.
- Closed longstanding email spoofing vulnerabilities from day one in the new environment through full SPF, DKIM, and DMARC implementation — a problem the legacy MSP-managed setup had never resolved.
- Delivered a clean, security-configured Google Workspace environment with enforced device management policies and full internal ownership — removing all dependency on external partners for day-to-day operations.