Case Study: Mecklenburg County achieves multimillion-dollar savings, improved services, and youth empowerment with Microsoft Azure

County Uses Technology to Save Millions of Dollars, Improve Services, and Empower Youth

Mecklenburg County, North Carolina — a fast-growing government serving nearly 1 million residents — faced a highly mobile workforce, inefficient paper-based processes, rising disaster-recovery and storage costs, and a need to give youth better access to tech careers. The county’s IT team needed a secure, manageable cloud and device strategy to improve field productivity, protect sensitive data, and support community education programs.

By joining Microsoft CityNext the county migrated 6,350 users to Office 365, deployed Surface Pro tablets, moved disaster recovery and archival storage to Azure, and adopted SharePoint Online and OneDrive. The changes enabled mobile staff to work onsite, cut an estimated $3.2 million in annual productivity costs for Youth and Family Services, reduced infrastructure spending by about $500,000 in year one, improved citizen services, and expanded youth training and paid internship opportunities through Microsoft YouthSpark and the Mayor’s Youth Employment program.

Mecklenburg County

Clifford Dupuy

Technical Services Director