Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) recently migrated from Microsoft Exchange physical servers to Microsoft Exchange Online (EXO), bringing more than 31,000 mailboxes onto a secure, cloud-based email platform.

This migration improves service reliability, strengthens security, and enables a more modern digital workplace for PSPC employees.

This marks a significant milestone for Shared Services Canada (SSC) in modernizing government technology and strengthening the digital services Canadians rely on.

Collaboration drives success

The success of the project was made possible through our strong collaboration with PSPC, bringing together expertise from project delivery, digital services, network operations, mobile device management, and email services.

Drawing on lessons learned from previous projects, teams adopted a phased approach that minimized disruption while maintaining service continuity throughout the transition.

“The EXO migration represents a significant business transformation for PSPC,” said Chang Shu, Acting Director, Digital Evolution and Projects at PSPC. “It demonstrates strong interdepartmental collaboration and technical excellence in delivering a large-scale cloud transformation.”

Delivering on SSC priorities

The migration directly supports our commitment to providing secure, reliable, and modern digital services for government organizations.

By transitioning PSPC to EXO, we are reducing reliance on legacy infrastructure while enabling access to cloud capabilities that improve service resiliency, security, and operational efficiency.

Key results include:

• more than 31,000 email accounts migrated
• up to 9,000 mailboxes migrated each week
• approximately 65 TB of data transferred
• only 767 mailboxes retained for application requirements
• project completed one week ahead of schedule

These results reflect our growing capacity to deliver large-scale cloud transformations that support government-wide modernization objectives.

Building the foundation for future modernization

Email is one of the most critical tools in the GC. Through this migration, PSPC employees now also benefit from seamless integration with modern collaboration tools.

“SSC installed and configured the new hybrid environment to support the transition and ongoing application mail requirements,” said Miguel Arsenault, Team Lead, Email Operations at SSC. “With strong governance and technical leadership, we completed the migration one week ahead of schedule, meeting the Chief Information Officer’s objective and ensuring a smooth user experience throughout.”

The knowledge and experience gained through this project will help inform and improve future migrations planned across the GC, supporting our role in delivering trusted digital services and advancing a more modern, connected, and secure public service.