Route One
Set up years ago, by someone who has since left, or by a provider doing the minimum. Nobody now knows what is configured, who can reach what, whether external sharing is open, or whether the security you pay for is switched on.
Accounts and admin roles, multi-factor authentication coverage, legacy authentication still permitted, conditional access, and who has guest access.
Which devices reach company data, whether they are managed, and whether they are encrypted. Personal phones usually appear here.
Protection against phishing and impersonation, forwarding rules nobody knew existed, and whether your domain authentication records are correct.
Sharing settings, external access, where company data actually lives, and what retention is in place.
What is held, what is assigned, what is unused, and what is over- or under-specified for the people using it.
Whether your Microsoft 365 data is backed up at all, and how far back a restore could actually go.
A written report with prioritised findings. Each one carries the risk, the effort to address it and the cost.
It is written so you can act on it with us or with anyone else. The report is yours whether or not you proceed.
Highest risk and lowest disruption first. Every change that affects how people sign in or work is communicated before it happens.
Nothing is done in one weekend sweep. The point is to improve the tenant without interrupting the working day.
Route Two
Five common starting points. Each has a different shape, a different risk and a different amount of user disruption.
Mail, calendar, contacts and Drive data move across. The technical part is well understood; the real work is the shift in how people work day to day.
Staff notice the change — different apps, different habits. We plan for that with a pilot group first, so the wider team moves onto something already proven. BIG FULFILMENT's full move completed in three weeks with no operational disruption.
Mail migrates to Exchange Online, and the file server becomes SharePoint or OneDrive. Then the old kit is decommissioned properly rather than left humming in a cupboard.
The file move needs decisions about structure — this is the moment to fix a folder tree nobody has understood since 2016, rather than copy it across intact.
Mail that came bundled with the domain or the website — 123-reg, GoDaddy, IONOS, a web designer’s hosting package. Very common in businesses that set themselves up on day one and never revisited it.
Usually the messiest starting point, and rarely anyone’s fault — no backup, no domain authentication, and mail sitting in local clients rather than on a server. Discovery takes longer than the migration, because we find every mailbox and alias first: the forgotten info@ or accounts@ is always the one that matters.
After an acquisition, a demerger or a provider change. The most complex case, because identity, mail, files, Teams and licensing all have to land together.
Longer planning, a firmer cutover date, and a period where both tenants coexist. This is the one where an experienced hand genuinely changes the outcome.
New or newly formalised businesses, starting properly on day one instead of inheriting years of improvisation.
The fastest and cheapest route, because there is nothing to unpick. Chrysalis Supplies had core systems live within 48 hours and the full environment inside three weeks.
Inventory of mailboxes, data and users, a target design, and a written sequence with dates.
A small group moves first. Problems surface on five people, not fifty.
Data moves in stages while the old system still works. Cutover happens out of hours where practical.
We are available on the first working day, and the old system stays until everyone is confident. Nothing is switched off to prove a point.
Route Three
Microsoft 365 is not a system you finish. Microsoft changes it continuously, and a configuration that was right last year drifts if nobody is watching. This is delivered as part of Managed IT Support.
Users, mailboxes, groups, permissions and licences — the requests that arrive every week.
As Microsoft introduces, changes and retires controls. This is continuous work, not a project with an end date.
Enrolment, configuration, encryption, patching and application delivery through Intune, so every device starts from the same standard.
Independent of Microsoft, monitored, with restores tested rather than assumed. See the section below on why this is not optional.
Helping people actually use Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive, rather than paying for tools that go unused.
Assignment, reclaim, right-sizing and renewal dates tracked, with notice before a decision becomes automatic.
Shared Responsibility
This is the most common and most expensive misunderstanding we encounter. Microsoft runs the service. Your data and configuration are yours to protect.
The availability of the service and the infrastructure it runs on. Microsoft keeps Microsoft 365 running, and does that very well.
Your data, your configuration and your access controls. If a file is deleted or an account is compromised, that sits on your side of the line.
An independent copy held outside the platform, a defined retention period, and granular restore — one mailbox, one folder, one file, one point in time.
Veeam backup for Microsoft 365 data, monitored, with restores tested to the schedule in your agreement. Your retention period is stated in that agreement rather than left vague.
Licensing
Described in principle, because the specifics change often and outdated licensing content would undermine the point of this page. Your position is confirmed in writing at the time of purchase.
Business plans suit most smaller organisations; enterprise plans matter once you need more advanced identity, security or compliance control, or you pass the seat ceiling on the business range. We will tell you which side of that line you are on.
Identity, security and compliance add-ons are worth buying when they enable a control you have actually decided to use. Bought speculatively, they are shelfware with a monthly cost.
Mixing licence types by what people do, rather than putting everyone on the same plan because it was simpler at the time. A warehouse user and a finance director do not need the same subscription.
Annual and monthly commitments behave differently, and annual quantities are broadly fixed until renewal. We model this before you buy — see Software for how commitments and renewals are handled.
Questions
No. Data is copied, not moved, and the source system stays intact until you are satisfied everything has arrived. We reconcile what landed against what was there before cutover.
It depends on the starting point and the volume of data. For context, BIG FULFILMENT's full move from Google Workspace completed in three weeks, and Chrysalis Supplies had core systems live within 48 hours. Tenant-to-tenant work takes longer.
A little. Usually signing in once on each device and confirming multi-factor authentication. We tell people what to expect beforehand, in language that does not need translating.
Yes. Your domain and addresses stay exactly as they are. Nothing about how you appear to customers changes.
No, and usually you should not. Mail first, files second, and the rest in sequence is the normal pattern. A pilot group goes before everyone else either way.
It stays running until you are confident, then it is decommissioned properly — data verified as migrated, backups retained per your agreement, and the hardware disposed of or repurposed on your instruction.
Yes. Microsoft guarantees the service is available, not that your data is recoverable from a deletion, a compromise or a mistake. Retention policies and recycle bins are not a backup.
No. It works better together, because assignment and reclaim then happen inside the support process, but it is not a condition of anything else we do.
Yes. The review is a standalone piece of work, the report is yours to keep, and plenty of them are delivered for businesses staying exactly where they are.
Copilot is Microsoft's AI assistant across the Microsoft 365 apps. The honest answer for most businesses is that readiness is a data question before a licensing one: Copilot surfaces what a user already has access to, so loose permissions and sprawling shared folders become visible fast. We would look at your sharing and permissions first. This area changes quickly, so we will give you the current position at the time rather than publish it here.
Next Step
We look at your tenant and tell you what is actually configured, what is exposed and what to fix first. You get a written report with the risk, effort and cost against each finding.
Four fields. We reply within one working day.
Related
The contracted service that administers and maintains all of this day to day.
Learn MoreReviews, migrations and remediation delivered against a written statement of work.
Learn MoreLicence supply, right-sizing, renewals and commitment terms, on one invoice.
Learn MoreIncluding a Google Workspace migration completed in three weeks.
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