SharePoint Migration Project
Upgrading SharePoint 2010 to 2016
Introduction
Founded more than 80 years ago, Volkswagen has grown into one of the world’s largest automotive manufacturers, producing millions of vehicles annually and employing over 170,000 people globally. Headquartered in Wolfsburg, Germany, the organisation operates at enormous scale, where secure, reliable, and modern IT systems play a critical role in supporting business operations, collaboration, and information management.
Within Volkswagen Financial Services, SharePoint had become an important platform for collaboration and internal communication. However, as technology platforms aged and support lifecycles evolved, the organisation recognised the need to modernise its environment to maintain performance, security, and long-term supportability.
Challenges
Volkswagen Financial Services had an established SharePoint environment operating on SharePoint 2010 and Windows Server 2008.
While the system continued to support business operations, both technologies had reached the end of Microsoft’s mainstream support lifecycle. Microsoft support for these products concluded in October 2015, creating growing concerns around security, maintainability, and long-term platform reliability.
Operating on unsupported infrastructure presented several challenges.
The organisation faced increasing exposure to:
- Legacy infrastructure and platform limitations
- Reduced vendor support and update availability
- Greater security and compliance risk
- Limited scalability and modern collaboration capability
- Increasing operational risk associated with ageing systems
Volkswagen Financial Services recognised that migrating to a newer SharePoint platform would not only reduce these risks but also improve productivity, strengthen collaboration, and provide access to more modern SharePoint functionality.
However, the migration itself introduced significant technical complexity.
Unlike many standard SharePoint upgrades, this project involved moving between versions with no direct migration path, while simultaneously handling an exceptionally large volume of business-critical data.
Our Solution
Dolphin IT Solutions designed and delivered a carefully managed SharePoint migration strategy tailored to the technical constraints of the existing environment.
Because SharePoint 2016 does not support direct migration from SharePoint 2010, the upgrade required a staged approach involving an intermediate migration to SharePoint 2013 before progressing to the final SharePoint 2016 environment.
This made the project significantly more complex than a conventional SharePoint upgrade.
Dolphin’s SharePoint specialists first established and configured a new SharePoint 2013 farm, carefully preparing the environment to support the initial migration phase.
The migration process involved:
- Configuring and validating the SharePoint 2013 farm
- Migrating content and infrastructure from SharePoint 2010
- Verifying data integrity and farm functionality
- Preparing and configuring the SharePoint 2016 environment
- Performing the second-stage migration into SharePoint 2016
- Completing testing and validation across both upgrade stages
This structured methodology ensured platform stability while minimising migration risk and preserving business continuity throughout the process.
Large-Scale SharePoint Data Migration
One of the most technically demanding aspects of the project was the volume of data involved.
Volkswagen Financial Services required the migration of approximately 9TB of SharePoint content from the legacy environment.
Because of the mandatory two-stage migration route, this data had to be transferred twice:
- From the original SharePoint 2010 farm into SharePoint 2013
- From SharePoint 2013 into the final SharePoint 2016 environment
Handling data at this scale required careful planning, migration sequencing, and performance management to maintain integrity and minimise operational disruption.
Dolphin IT Solutions managed the migration process with a focus on:
- Data integrity and validation
- Farm performance and configuration
- Migration reliability and stability
- Minimising business disruption
- Controlled and repeatable migration procedures
Through careful execution, the migration was completed successfully while preserving critical business information and maintaining platform continuity.
SharePoint 2016 Upgrade and Intranet Modernisation
Beyond infrastructure migration, Volkswagen Financial Services also sought to modernise its internal digital workplace.
Following completion of the SharePoint upgrade, Dolphin IT Solutions redesigned and rebuilt the organisation’s intranet within the new SharePoint 2016 environment.
Rather than simply replicating the previous intranet, the project created an improved platform tailored to evolving business requirements and user expectations.
The new intranet incorporated additional functionality and enhancements designed to strengthen usability, collaboration, and access to information.
By combining platform migration with intranet redevelopment, Volkswagen Financial Services gained both a modern technical foundation and an improved user experience.
Results
The completed project successfully transitioned Volkswagen Financial Services from an ageing and unsupported SharePoint 2010 environment to a modern SharePoint 2016 platform.
Through a carefully managed two-stage migration process, Dolphin IT Solutions safely transferred approximately 9TB of business-critical data while maintaining integrity and minimising operational risk.
The migration reduced the organisation’s exposure to unsupported infrastructure and provided access to enhanced collaboration capabilities and a more secure, supportable environment.
The redevelopment of the intranet further improved internal communication and usability, ensuring the platform delivered value beyond infrastructure modernisation alone.
By combining large-scale SharePoint migration expertise with intranet development and platform optimisation, Dolphin IT Solutions provided Volkswagen Financial Services with a future-ready collaboration environment capable of supporting the organisation’s ongoing operational and digital transformation goals.
