How AO Group built its own SharePoint archive on Microsoft Azure

AO faced a familiar business problem. Historical documents had accumulated in SharePoint alongside the files people needed for everyday work. The organisation needed to retain access to that knowledge while addressing growing storage pressure and the cost of keeping inactive content in a collaboration platform.

AO chose to solve the problem with its own technology expertise. The business became the customer, and AO’s own team designed and delivered the solution. It is a direct example of AO using the services it offers to the market to run its own operations.

The team built an internal archive using Microsoft Azure Blob Storage. Active working files remain in SharePoint, while migrated historical content is available through a dedicated interface.

Authorised employees can access historical business documents through an approach aligned with AO’s information-governance requirements.

The implementation included a governance review and document lifecycle management, providing a structured way to retain and access business knowledge.

AO developed and used migration automation to inventory the content, copy it to Azure and verify the transfer. Final reconciliation checked file counts and data volumes, supported by representative retrieval checks. The team retained delivery evidence to support verification.

On 27 October 2026, AO’s Group CTO confirmed that 100% of the scoped archive migration and final reconciliation were complete.

The completed migration is a defined delivery milestone. Final project closeout and confirmation of recovered storage capacity remain separate steps.

AO’s planning model indicated approximately R17,200 per month in potential storage-only savings, using planning rates for additional SharePoint capacity and Azure-based archiving. The estimate excludes implementation, portal hosting, operations, retrieval and other usage charges. Actual savings remain to be measured after final project closeout and billing review.

The delivered result is an operational archive with controlled employee access and a completed, reconciled migration. AO also has a documented process it can apply to future archive candidates.

By becoming its own customer, AO has worked through the business and technical decisions involved in SharePoint archiving, including the selection of historical content, authorised access and verification of the migration.

That experience informs the Microsoft 365, Azure cloud and custom portal capabilities AO offers customers. Our own teams rely on the technology we have built, giving us direct experience of operating and supporting the solution.

If historical files are putting pressure on your SharePoint environment, speak to AO ICT about a SharePoint storage and archiving assessment.