Cloud Services & Microsoft 365

It starts with an audit, not a migration. We map what you’re running, what it costs, and what depends on what — then sequence the move so the pieces that break together move together. The usual order: identity and email first (Microsoft 365, hardened), then file storage, then line-of-business applications, then whatever is left on the server. Most of it happens outside business hours. You get a written plan with dates before anything moves, and we don’t start until you’ve read it. See how the sausage is made.

For email and file moves, close to none — data syncs in the background for days before the cutover, and the switch itself is a DNS change most people experience as ‘sign in again.’ Line-of-business applications are where honest planning matters: if an app has to move to a hosted desktop, we cut over on a weekend and keep the old environment running until the new one is proven. We tell you the realistic window up front, and when we can’t do it without downtime we schedule it instead of surprising you with it. Hosted and hybrid options.

Licensing is billed by Microsoft and is not included in a uConnect plan — deliberately, so you own the subscription and can see exactly what you’re paying for. What we do is make sure you’re on the right SKU. Most environments we audit are paying for licenses nobody uses, or paying for a premium tier while leaving the security features it already includes switched off. The right plan often replaces tools you’re paying for separately. That review happens as part of the audit, and we’ll tell you exactly where the waste is. Contact Us.

Microsoft 365 data lives in Microsoft’s US datacenters. Anything we host for you lives in Azure or in our own SOC 2 datacenters — appointment-only access, escorts and mantraps, redundant power on separate circuits, and real-time failover across multiple ISPs. On backup: Microsoft replicates your data, which is not the same as backing it up. Their retention won’t save you from a mailbox somebody deleted six months ago, or from ransomware that reaches SharePoint. We run independent backups of Microsoft 365 and of hosted workloads, and we test the restores — a backup nobody has restored from is a guess, not a plan.

Most companies need both for a while, and that’s fine. Microsoft 365 covers email, files, collaboration, identity, and device management — for a lot of businesses that’s ninety percent of the job and the server goes away entirely. Hosted infrastructure is for what’s left: the accounting package, the EHR, the SQL database, the twenty-year-old application your industry still runs on. Azure Virtual Desktop or a hosted private server keeps those running properly without keeping a server in your closet. The wrong answer is buying both and using neither well, which is what happens when nobody designs it.

You take it with you. The Microsoft 365 tenant is yours — bought in your name, owned by your company — and so are the domains, the licenses, and everything in them. We hand over global admin, the documentation, and any backup archives, and we’ll spend transition time with the next provider rather than making it their problem. No hostage-taking, no proprietary format only our tools can read, no export fee. We’d rather earn the renewal. For what it’s worth, agreements run on 1-year or 3-year terms with a 6-month evaluation period for new partners, so the first commitment is small on purpose.