How TXB Stores moved to Microsoft 365 and built a modern data platform on Azure.
A multi-site convenience retailer with deep operational complexity. Cloudaen partnered with TXB to migrate from on-premises Exchange to Microsoft 365 and design the Azure data foundation that runs their financial and operational reporting.
Working with Cloudaen has been an outstanding experience. Their customer-first approach made every stage of our Microsoft 365 migration, from our on-premises Exchange environment to Microsoft 365, smooth and well managed. They took the time to understand our business, communicated clearly throughout the project, and ensured minimal disruption to our operations. Beyond the migration, they designed and implemented our cloud data environment in Azure that has become a critical component of our cloud and data strategy. The solution enables reliable, secure data flow from our financial and operational systems to the cloud, ensuring our business information is accessible where and when we need it. Their technical expertise, professionalism, and commitment to our success have made them a trusted technology partner that I would confidently recommend.
A Texas-grown convenience retailer with serious data complexity.
TXB operates a growing network of convenience stores across Texas and Oklahoma, with the operational mix that comes with modern retail: fuel, foodservice, loyalty, payments, payroll, and a finance team that needs to see the whole picture every morning.
By the time TXB engaged Cloudaen, the company had outgrown the IT footprint it had been running on for years. Email, identity, and reporting were stitched together across on-premises servers, third-party platforms, and exports. The team needed an IT partner that could understand the business first, then propose the right next steps without overhauling everything at once.
Aging infrastructure was holding the business back.
Three problems were quietly accumulating across the organization.
On-prem Exchange limits
The Exchange server kept the lights on but came with maintenance windows, mailbox quota friction, and an upgrade path that would have meant another decade of the same dependencies.
Siloed financial and operational data
PDI, Microsoft 365, point-of-sale, and fuel systems all generated rich data, but each lived in its own silo. Building a consolidated view meant exports, spreadsheets, and late nights.
Security and continuity risk
An on-prem mail platform meant a single point of failure for the most business-critical communication channel, and a security posture that needed manual patching to stay current.
We started by listening, not selling.
Before we proposed a single piece of architecture, we did the work to understand how TXB actually runs day to day.
We spent the first weeks of the engagement embedded with the TXB IT and operations teams. We mapped every system that touched the finance team’s month-end. We traced the lifecycle of a single transaction from the pump to the general ledger. The questions weren’t "what software do you want?", they were "what work are you trying to finish?" and "what are you scared will break?"
That discovery surfaced the priorities the existing roadmap had buried. Email was the most visible pain, but the bigger opportunity was a data platform that could finally bring TXB’s finance, fuel, and store-operations data together in one place. So we sequenced the work. Migrate the mail platform first to remove an entire category of operational risk. Then build the data foundation that would carry the business forward for the next decade.
From on-prem Exchange to Microsoft 365, with no operational drama.
A staged migration carried every TXB mailbox, distribution list, calendar, and shared resource into Microsoft 365 with minimal disruption to operations.
We started with a full audit of the existing Exchange environment: mailbox sizes, public folders, shared resources, mail flow rules, third-party connectors, and the long tail of policies that had accumulated over years. We then built a pilot tenant, validated identity sync, hardened the security baseline (MFA, conditional access, modern auth, anti-phishing policies), and ran a controlled migration of a representative group of users.
Once the pilot proved out, we moved the rest of TXB in waves. Mailboxes co-existed during cutover, so nobody lost a thread. Distribution lists, calendars, and shared mailboxes were preserved. The old Exchange infrastructure was decommissioned cleanly, with a backout plan in place at every step that was never needed.
One source of truth, built to scale.
With email solved, we turned to the bigger prize: a single, secure environment where TXB’s financial and operational data could finally live and be analyzed.
We architected and implemented a modern data platform in Azure that ingests data from PDI (TXB’s back-office and fuel platform), Microsoft 365, and the operational systems running across stores. Azure Data Factory orchestrates the pipelines. Databricks handles the heavy lifting on transformations and the medallion layers. Power BI delivers the dashboards finance and operations leadership use to run the business.
Security and governance were not afterthoughts. We baked in least-privilege access, encryption in transit and at rest, secrets management via Azure Key Vault, and monitoring across every stage so the team always knows the data is fresh, accurate, and arriving on time.
The stack behind the platform.
A focused set of best-in-class services, integrated end to end.
Microsoft 365
Exchange Online, identity, security baseline.
Microsoft Azure
Cloud foundation, networking, security.
Azure Databricks
Data transformations and medallion layers.
Power BI
Finance and operations dashboards.
PDI
Back-office and fuel data integration.
An IT foundation built for what comes next.
Modern mail platform
TXB’s entire email environment now runs on Microsoft 365, with modern identity, MFA, and security policies enforced across the organization.
One source of truth
Financial and operational data flows reliably and securely from source systems into a unified Azure environment, available where and when it’s needed.
A long-term partner
Cloudaen stayed on as TXB’s technology partner, supporting the platform, evolving the data architecture, and helping the team plan what’s next.
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