Microsoft 365

Not in the way most people assume. Microsoft operates a shared responsibility model — they keep the service running, you remain responsible for your data. Retention policies and the recycle bin will recover a file deleted last week, but they're time-limited. They won't help with a mailbox deleted months ago, a ransomware event that syncs through OneDrive, or a departing employee who cleared their SharePoint folders. We deploy independent backup covering Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams.

It depends on how your business works, not on headcount. Business Basic suits staff who only need email and the web apps. Business Standard adds the desktop Office applications. Business Premium adds the security and device management layer — Intune, Defender and Entra ID P1 — which is where most businesses with compliance or cyber-insurance requirements end up. We assess actual usage before recommending anything, and mixed licensing across a business is normal and usually works out better than putting everyone on one plan.

A properly planned migration shouldn't interrupt anyone's working day. We stage mailbox data ahead of the cutover, run the switch outside business hours, and keep the old environment available until the new one is confirmed working. What matters most is the preparation — DNS records, licensing, and testing on a pilot group before the wider business moves.

Yes, and increasingly you'll be asked to prove it. Multi-factor authentication across all users is our standard for every Microsoft 365 deployment. It's also the control most commonly required by cyber insurers, and the one most frequently missing when we assess a new environment. Where your licensing supports Conditional Access, we use it to apply the requirement intelligently rather than making people approve prompts all day.

We start with a readiness assessment rather than a licence purchase. Copilot surfaces whatever a user already has access to, so an environment with loose SharePoint permissions will surface things it shouldn't. We review permissions, data governance and licensing first, then plan the deployment and the adoption support around it.

Yes. Hybrid arrangements are common and there's no requirement to move everything at once. Plenty of our clients run Exchange Online alongside on-premise file servers or line-of-business applications for years. We plan the sequence around your business rather than pushing a single cutover.