Standing up IT for a spin-out, then taking over every service

The situation

IronOak Energy was newly separated from its former parent. On day one it had staff across several US sites, a transition services agreement with a clock on it, and no IT team, no tenant, no service desk — nothing of its own.

Everything the business ran on still belonged to the parent, and it all had to be replaced or migrated before the agreement expired.

What we did

• Target operating model first. In the first weeks we agreed what IronOak's IT should look like as a standalone company: platform choices, licensing, security posture, and what would be run in-house versus by us (all of it, as it turned out).
• Built the foundation. Stood up identity, email, collaboration, device management, and network across every site, configured to a secure baseline from the start.
• Migrated off the parent. Moved data, files, and line-of-business applications out of the parent's environment into IronOak's own cloud tenancy, in sequenced waves with cutover runbooks.
• Cut over before the deadline. Completed separation ahead of the transition-agreement expiry, with support on the ground at each site during the switch.
• Rolled into managed service. Once separated, XCofinite took over run operations end to end: 24/7 service desk, monitoring, patching, backup, and security for the whole company.

The result

IronOak made a clean break from its former parent on schedule. Staff across every location kept working through the transition, the company owns its own environment, and it has a single team running IT so its leadership can focus on the business instead of building an IT department from scratch.