Delivering Business Value Through Large-Scale Data Center Decommissioning
Industry
Automotive
Services
Strategy & Planning, Technology Modernization
As infrastructure modernized, disciplined decommissioning became essential to fully realize the benefits of transformation.
Opportunity
A Global Fortune 100 automotive manufacturer initiated large-scale data center migration to support the consolidation of its Sales and Manufacturing businesses. While the migration itself was critical, the full business case depended on successfully decommissioning both legacy data centers in time to enable property sale and cost realization.
Decommissioning efforts had to be tightly synchronized with application migration timelines, ensuring that infrastructure was not retired prematurely while also avoiding delays that could jeopardize business milestones. Thousands of physical and digital assets required secure handling, with strict adherence to data privacy, regulatory, and environmental standards.
Outcome
Delivered on Schedule & Budget
Retired 22,000 sq. ft. of infrastructure across two data centers, enabling timely property sale.
Full Asset Decommission
Decommissioned 2,500 servers and 500 network devices, with less than 1% requiring reactivation.
$4M in Assets Repurposed
Donated equipment to local schools, extending value beyond the organization.
Responsible & Compliant Disposal
Safely disposed of all equipment in compliance with environmental and data security standards.
Approach
This phase of the program required decommissioning to be completed within an accelerated six-month timeline, creating a clear need for precise, coordinated execution to enable the timely sale of both properties.
Two Roads was engaged to lead the end-to-end decommissioning effort, bringing structure, governance, and disciplined execution to a highly interdependent phase of the program. From the outset, we established a comprehensive plan that aligned decommissioning activities directly to the migration roadmap, ensuring infrastructure shutdowns progressed in lockstep with application cutovers.
Central to this effort was strong cross-functional coordination across Planning, Application, and Infrastructure teams. We worked with each group to establish clear ownership, designate accountable leads, and actively manage dependencies. This alignment ensured decisions were informed and timely across the broader program.
We implemented a data-driven approach that consolidated multiple data sources into a unified view of assets, dependencies, and readiness. This enabled us to build a reliable decommissioning schedule and reduce the risk of missed or prematurely retired systems, while maintaining transparency across stakeholders.
Rather than allowing decommissioning to become an end-of-program bottleneck, we advanced execution in parallel with migration milestones. By defining fulfillment processes early and continuously monitoring progress, we delivered the program on schedule, minimized risk, and enabled a successful infrastructure sunset.
Authors
Keith McHone
Associate
