SmiKar case studies show $2.1M+ in annual Microsoft 365 storage savings

SmiKar Software says three enterprise Squirrel deployments cut more than $2.1 million a year in Microsoft 365 SharePoint storage overage costs across healthcare, engineering and financial services customers. The cases highlight a growing storage bill problem for large tenants and position archived content in customer-owned Azure Blob Storage as a cheaper alternative.

Why it matters: - Microsoft 365 SharePoint storage overage charges can add up fast for large tenants with inactive content and long retention needs. - SmiKar Software says the case studies show a per-terabyte savings model that scales from 20 terabytes to more than a petabyte. - The compilation also frames a strategic issue for AI use: Microsoft 365 Archive excludes archived content from Microsoft Copilot grounding.

What happened: - SmiKar Software released a new case study compilation covering three enterprise Squirrel deployments. - The deployments collectively eliminated more than $2.1 million per year in Microsoft 365 SharePoint storage overage charges. - The customers include a Fortune 500 consumer healthcare brand owner, a FTSE 250 global engineering group, and a mid-market financial services firm. - The release was issued June 15, 2026, from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

The details: - Microsoft 365 charges $0.20 per gigabyte per month for SharePoint storage above a tenant's licensed entitlement. - Squirrel moves inactive SharePoint Online content into the customer’s own Azure Blob Storage account and leaves stub files visible in SharePoint, OneDrive sync, and Microsoft Teams. - Customers can choose Azure Hot, Cool, Cold, or Archive storage tiers based on retrieval needs and budget. - The optional Nutshell AI module adds plain-language document summaries to archived stubs so content remains discoverable to Microsoft Copilot and SharePoint Search. - The healthcare customer has a SharePoint estate above 1.4 petabytes and has archived more than 600 terabytes so far. - That deployment is saving about $200 per terabyte per month, or about $1.44 million a year, with a five-year projected saving of $7.2 million. - The engineering customer has cut its SharePoint footprint from a trajectory above 460 terabytes to 165 terabytes. - That reduction of nearly 300 terabytes is projected to save about $708,000 a year. - The engineering customer also deployed Nutshell AI to preserve Microsoft Copilot grounding on archived engineering documents. - The financial services firm used Squirrel during a planned migration from a legacy file server to SharePoint Online. - By archiving 20 terabytes during the migration, the firm avoided about $48,000 a year in recurring storage overage charges. - The compilation includes a methodology section, an architecture description showing Squirrel writes to customer-owned Azure Blob Storage without SmiKar Software retaining a persistent copy of customer content, and a worked example for a typical 200-terabyte-over-entitlement tenant. - SmiKar says the full case study compilation is available without charge.

Between the lines: - The cases suggest the storage savings story is strongest for regulated and document-heavy organizations with large inactive archives. - The Copilot grounding point is a competitive differentiator because native archive options can reduce cost while limiting AI access to archived content. - The customer-owned storage model may appeal to organizations that want more control over data location and retention economics.

What's next: - SmiKar is likely to use the compilation to sell the same storage economics to other large Microsoft 365 tenants. - The company is also signaling that Copilot access to archived content will remain part of the product pitch as AI adoption grows. - Organizations with large SharePoint estates and migration projects may use the published methodology to estimate their own savings.

The bottom line: - SmiKar is betting that enterprise buyers will treat SharePoint archiving as both a cost-control and AI-access problem, not just a storage problem.