The move, and then the years afterwards.
Cloud work splits into two jobs that get sold as one. There is the migration — a project with a plan, a cutover, and an end. Then there is administration, which is every day after that, and where most of the actual value sits.
- 01
Platform consultationWhich destination genuinely fits how your team works and what it already runs
- 02
Tenant setup and configurationDomains, directory, policies, and the settings that are painful to change later
- 03
Account and mailbox preparationUsers, groups, shared and resource mailboxes, licences assigned
- 04
Data movementMail, calendars, contacts, and files from the agreed source platform
- 05
Security configurationIdentity, access, and email controls set up deliberately rather than left at default
- 06
Validation and cutoverChecking what arrived before mail flow moves, not after
- 07
Transition support for usersThe week where everyone has a question and nobody reads the email about it
- 08
Ongoing administrationAccounts, licensing changes, policy, and support once you are live
Source and destination platforms, mailbox and data types, licensing, retention, archiving, backup, security add-ons, compliance features, remediation work, user support, and exclusions are defined in the applicable agreement.
Email and data migration
Planning is where a migration is won or lost.
The part people picture — data moving — is the most predictable stage. What causes trouble is everything discovered halfway through: a shared mailbox nobody mentioned, permissions that do not map between platforms, a legacy archive in a format the destination does not accept, or an application that authenticates against the old system.
We find those during planning, tell you which ones cost time or money to resolve, and let you decide before the schedule is set rather than during the cutover weekend.
Scoped in your agreement
Source and destination platforms, which mailbox and data types are in scope, how much historical data moves, the cutover window, and what remediation work is included.
Items that cannot be migrated cleanly are identified in planning and listed, so the exclusions are agreed rather than discovered.
Microsoft 365 & Google Workspace administration
A tenant nobody administers drifts within a year.
Staff join and leave. Licences get assigned and never reclaimed. Sharing settings get loosened for one urgent reason and stay loose. Someone enables a feature that changes how external mail is handled. None of it is dramatic, and all of it compounds.
Ongoing administration means accounts and access are managed properly, licence assignment reflects who actually works there, security configuration is reviewed rather than assumed, and your team has somewhere to ask.
Scoped in your agreement
Which platforms are administered, user and licence counts, security add-ons, retention and archiving configuration, reporting, and the support route for your team.
Compliance features available on a platform are not the same as your organization being ready — see readiness.
Four things every migration proposal should say out loud.
These are the assumptions that turn a smooth project into an argument. Better to disagree about them now, in writing, than during the first week on the new platform.
There is no zero-downtime migration
Mail flow has to move at some point. We schedule the cutover around your operation, keep the window as small as the scope allows, and tell you what it is. A provider promising none has either not scoped it or is not describing a migration.
Not everything moves perfectly
Some item types, permission structures, shared arrangements, and legacy formats do not map cleanly between platforms. We identify those in planning and list them as exclusions rather than discovering them live.
Licensing is not included unless stated
Subscription costs, security add-ons, and third-party licensing are separate from the work of migrating and administering. Where they are included, the agreement says so explicitly and names them.
Built-in retention is not a backup
Retention settings and recycle bins are platform features with their own windows and rules. What is retained, for how long, and what happens when a window closes should be settled deliberately. Backup and recovery
What owners ask before signing off a migration.
Usually the first one, immediately, and in a slightly worried tone.
01How much downtime should we expect?
There is a cutover window, and its size depends on how many mailboxes are moving, how much historical data comes with them, and which platforms are involved. We scope it against your environment and schedule it around your operating hours — evenings and weekends, usually.
We will tell you the window rather than promise there is not one. What we can commit to is that you know the number before the date is booked.
02Will everything come across?
Mail, calendars, contacts, and files in scope generally migrate well. What needs attention is the awkward edges: shared and delegated mailboxes, permission structures that have no direct equivalent, very old archive formats, and anything that authenticates against the platform you are leaving.
Planning surfaces those. You get a list of what will not move cleanly, with options, before the schedule is fixed rather than as an apology afterwards.
03Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace?
It depends on what your team already knows, which of your line-of-business applications integrate with which, how you handle documents, and any requirements you have to meet. For a lot of organizations the honest answer is that either would work and the deciding factor is familiarity.
We will give you a recommendation and the reasoning. Where it is genuinely close, we will say that too rather than manufacturing a reason to prefer one.
04Do we still need backup if we are in the cloud?
Platform retention and a backup are different things with different purposes. Retention governs how long deleted items stay recoverable inside the service, on that service's terms. A backup is a separate copy you control, with your own retention.
Which you need depends on how far back you might have to reach and what you are protecting against — accidental deletion behaves very differently from a compromised account. Worth settling explicitly alongside backup and recovery.
05Are the licences included in your price?
Not unless the agreement says so. Subscription licensing is normally billed to you directly by the platform, which also means you own the tenant and the relationship rather than renting it through a provider.
We advise on the right licence mix for what you actually need — that conversation frequently reduces the bill, because organizations tend to accumulate seats and tiers nobody reviews.
Tell us what you are moving from.
A cloud review covers where your mail and files live today, how many people and mailboxes are involved, what has to keep working through the change, and which awkward edges are going to need a decision.
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