Proactive monitoring, incident response, and continuous optimization for your entire Microsoft environment. SLA-backed support from the team that built it.
Managed Services Microsoft 24x7 Support Guide — enterprise reference guide from EPC Group, built since 1997 of Microsoft consulting engagements at Fortune 500 scale. Covers architecture, governance, compliance, pricing benchmarks, and implementation timelines for the Microsoft ecosystem.
By Errin O'Connor, Founder & Chief AI Architect, EPC Group
Quick Answer: EPC Group offers Microsoft managed services that include:
We provide three SLA tiers, with prices ranging from $5,000 to $40,000 per month. Each tier ensures 99.9% uptime.
Response times are as follows:
By selecting our managed services, you can save between 40% and 60% compared to hiring 2-3 in-house Microsoft administrators.
The annual cost for this in-house option is several fully loaded salaries.
Our services also offer additional benefits:
Many organizations encounter issues after their Microsoft implementation is complete. The project team leaves, which leaves the internal IT team with a system they did not build. As a result, the platform often declines within six months.
Implementation is not the finish line — it is the starting line. EPC Group does not disappear after go-live. Our managed services ensure your Microsoft environment runs at peak performance, stays secure, remains compliant, and continuously optimizes costs from day one through year ten and beyond.
We have built your environment and understand your architecture, data flows, compliance needs, and business context. This deep knowledge sets our managed services apart from a typical MSP that has never worked with your tenant.
The real comparison is not cost alone — it is coverage, expertise depth, and risk.
| Factor | In-House (2-3 FTEs) | EPC Managed Services |
|---|---|---|
| Annual Cost | $300,000-$500,000 (salary + benefits + training + tools) | $120,000-$240,000 ($10-20K/month Professional tier) |
| Coverage Hours | Business hours only — no nights, weekends, holidays | Up to 24/7/365 with Enterprise tier |
| Expertise Depth | 2-3 people covering ALL Microsoft services | Team of 15+ specialists across Azure, M365, Security, Power BI |
| Hiring Risk | 3-6 month recruitment cycle, 20%+ annual turnover in IT | Zero — EPC handles staffing, training, retention |
| Vacation/Sick Coverage | Coverage gaps when staff is out | No gaps — team-based model ensures continuous coverage |
| Security Expertise | Generalists — limited security depth | Dedicated security analysts with Sentinel, Defender, compliance |
| Cost Optimization | Rarely prioritized — staff focused on operations | Monthly reviews — typical 20-40% Azure cost reduction |
| Compliance Monitoring | Manual, periodic, audit-driven | Continuous, automated, evidence-ready |
| Scalability | Need to hire to scale — months of lead time | Scale up or down monthly — no commitments beyond 30 days |
Bottom line: For the cost of 1.5 full-time Microsoft administrators, you get a team of more than 15 specialists. This team provides:
Additionally, you benefit from continuous cost optimization. This typically pays for itself within 90 days through Azure spend reduction alone.
$5,000-$10,000/mo
Business Hours (8am-6pm EST)
4-hour P1 response
Organizations with 50-200 users and straightforward M365 environments
$10,000-$20,000/mo
Extended Hours (6am-10pm EST)
2-hour P1 response
Organizations with 200-1,000 users needing proactive security and optimization
$20,000-$40,000/mo
24/7/365 Coverage
30-minute P1 response
Organizations with 1,000+ users, regulated industries, or mission-critical Microsoft workloads
Six operational domains — managed as one unified service, not six disconnected support tickets.
Virtual machines, networking, databases, App Services, AKS, Functions. Patching, scaling, cost optimization, disaster recovery testing, and performance tuning. We manage your Azure so you never think about infrastructure.
Exchange Online, SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, Intune. User provisioning, license management, retention policies, guest access governance, and service health monitoring. Your digital workplace, professionally managed.
Report maintenance, dataset refresh monitoring, Premium capacity management, performance tuning, governance enforcement, and user support. Your analytics platform runs at peak performance without consuming your BI team time.
Microsoft Defender suite, Sentinel SIEM, Entra ID, Purview DLP, Conditional Access. Threat detection, incident response, vulnerability management, and compliance monitoring. Security operations as a service.
24/7 proactive monitoring across all Microsoft services. Automated alerting with intelligent threshold tuning. Anomaly detection, capacity forecasting, and trend analysis. We see problems before your users do.
Azure spend analysis with reserved instance recommendations. M365 license right-sizing and reassignment. Unused resource identification and decommissioning. Typical savings: 20-40% of current Microsoft spend within 90 days.
Top 10 enterprise Microsoft consulting firms with managed services comparison.
Read moreEPC Group fixed-fee consulting packages — start with implementation, transition to managed.
Read moreZero Trust architecture that our managed services team monitors and maintains.
Read moreMicrosoft managed services provide ongoing operational support for your entire Microsoft environment — Azure infrastructure, Microsoft 365, Power BI, SharePoint, Teams, and security platforms. This goes far beyond break-fix help desk support. Managed services include 24/7 proactive monitoring with automated alerting, scheduled patching and updates, incident response with defined SLAs, performance optimization and capacity planning, security monitoring through Microsoft Defender and Sentinel, license management and cost optimization, and strategic advisory. EPC Group acts as your outsourced Microsoft operations team — we manage the platform so your internal IT can focus on business initiatives instead of keeping the lights on.
Microsoft managed services pricing depends on your environment size and required SLA tier. EPC Group offers three tiers: Standard ($5,000-$10,000/month) with business hours support and 4-hour P1 response, Professional ($10,000-$20,000/month) with extended hours and 2-hour P1 response, and Enterprise ($20,000-$40,000/month) with 24/7/365 coverage and 30-minute critical response. Per-user pricing for M365-only managed services ranges from $15-$50/user/month. Compared to hiring 2-3 full-time Microsoft administrators at $300,000-$500,000/year in loaded costs (salary, benefits, training, tools, coverage gaps), managed services deliver superior coverage at 40-60% lower total cost with zero recruitment risk.
EPC Group managed services include four SLA severity levels: Critical P1 (system down affecting all users) — 30-minute response time, 4-hour resolution target, executive notification within 1 hour. High P2 (major feature impaired affecting multiple users) — 1-hour response, 8-hour resolution target. Medium P3 (minor feature impaired with workaround available) — 4-hour response, next business day resolution. Low P4 (enhancement requests and non-urgent changes) — next business day response, scheduled resolution. Monthly infrastructure uptime SLA: 99.9%. All SLA tiers include documented escalation paths, root cause analysis for P1/P2 incidents, and monthly SLA compliance reporting.
A help desk is reactive — users call when something breaks, and someone fixes it. Managed services are proactive — we monitor your environment 24/7 and fix issues before users even notice them. The practical difference: a help desk responds to the symptom ("my email is slow"). Managed services identify and resolve the root cause before the symptom appears (monitoring Exchange Online health metrics, detecting performance degradation, and remediating before it impacts users). Managed services also include strategic elements that help desks do not: capacity planning, cost optimization, security posture management, compliance monitoring, quarterly business reviews, and technology roadmap advisory.
Yes — and this is one of EPC Group strongest differentiators. Most managed services providers specialize in either Azure infrastructure OR Microsoft 365, creating gaps between teams. EPC Group provides unified managed services across the entire Microsoft stack from a single team: Azure infrastructure (VMs, networking, databases, App Services, Kubernetes), Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online, SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, Intune), Power BI (report maintenance, data refresh monitoring, capacity management, governance), Security (Defender suite, Microsoft Sentinel SIEM, Entra ID, Purview DLP), and Copilot (usage monitoring, governance compliance, prompt optimization). One team, one escalation path, one monthly report — no finger-pointing between Azure and M365 support teams.
EPC Group security managed services include comprehensive threat detection and response: Microsoft Sentinel SIEM deployment, monitoring, and alert triage with custom detection rules. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Office 365, Cloud Apps, and Identity management. Entra ID sign-in risk monitoring with automated response to impossible travel, risky sign-ins, and compromised credentials. DLP policy management including incident investigation and false positive tuning. Vulnerability scanning with tracked remediation and SLA-based patching. Monthly security posture reports with trend analysis and improvement recommendations. Quarterly security reviews with executive briefing. For HIPAA, SOC 2, and FedRAMP environments, we provide compliance-specific monitoring dashboards and automated evidence collection for audit preparation.
EPC Group managed services onboarding follows a structured 4-week process: Week 1 — Discovery and environment assessment (inventory all Azure resources, M365 services, security configurations, current pain points). Week 2 — Monitoring deployment (install agents, configure dashboards, set alert thresholds, establish baselines). Week 3 — Process integration (define escalation paths, integrate with your ticketing system, train your team on the engagement model). Week 4 — Go-live and stabilization (begin active monitoring, resolve initial findings, hold first status call). After Week 4, you are in steady-state managed operations with your assigned engineering team.
When a P1 critical incident occurs (system down affecting all users), our response follows a defined incident management process: 0-30 minutes — alert triggered, on-call engineer acknowledges, initial triage begins, your designated contacts are notified. 30-60 minutes — root cause identified or escalated to senior engineer, executive notification sent, status page updated. 1-4 hours — resolution implemented and verified, affected users notified, temporary workarounds deployed if full fix requires a maintenance window. Post-incident — root cause analysis (RCA) document delivered within 48 hours, preventive measures identified and implemented, incident reviewed in next status call. All P1 incidents include a post-mortem review to prevent recurrence.
Schedule a free managed services assessment. We will evaluate your environment and identify operational gaps. Our team will recommend the right support tier.
Additionally, we will provide a detailed cost comparison against your current in-house or outsourced support costs.
EPC Group provides 24/7 managed services for the entire Microsoft stack. Our offerings include:
All support is backed by a Service Level Agreement (SLA) and starts at $5,000 per month.
With one team managing everything, there are no handoffs between vendors. This ensures a seamless experience for our clients.
Most enterprises piece together multiple vendors to support their Microsoft environment. EPC Group covers the full stack from a single team.
One managed services team handles incidents, changes, and strategic reviews across all of these layers. Your team contacts one number — not five vendors.
EPC Group monitors your Microsoft environment 24/7. We utilize Microsoft-native tools, including:
Additionally, we incorporate third-party observability platforms to enhance our monitoring capabilities.
When an alert occurs, our on-call engineers respond within minutes. They have complete context about your environment before making decisions. This leads to quicker resolutions and fewer escalations.
| Priority | Example Scenario | Response | Resolution Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| P1 — Critical | Full tenant outage, ransomware detection, data breach | 15 minutes | 4 hours |
| P2 — High | Exchange down for a department, Azure workload failing | 30 minutes | 8 hours |
| P3 — Medium | Performance degradation, non-critical feature unavailable | 2 hours | 24 hours |
| P4 — Low | Cosmetic issues, user requests, minor configuration changes | 4 hours | 72 hours |
Break-fix support waits for something to go wrong. Managed services catch problems before users notice them.
EPC Group's proactive services include monthly security posture reviews, patch management, capacity planning, and license optimization. We flag risks in monthly reports — before they become incidents.
Hiring a full-time Microsoft administrator costs between $90,000 and $130,000 per year. This salary only covers support during business hours for one platform. It does not include simultaneous support for:
EPC Group offers a team of over 15 specialists for the cost of 1–2 full-time admins. This team provides 24/7 coverage across the full stack.
Benefits include:
EPC Group specializes in several key areas of Azure management. We focus on:
We also manage production, staging, and disaster recovery environments. All changes follow a tested change management process, ensuring no surprises.
We manage user provisioning, license assignment, Exchange Online, SharePoint governance, Teams policies, and Intune device management. Security configuration — Conditional Access, DLP, sensitivity labels — is maintained and reviewed monthly.
EPC Group monitors the health of your Power BI workspace. We check several key areas, including:
Our team also optimizes slow reports, resolves refresh failures, and manages Fabric pipeline health.
Each month, we provide analytics health reports to your stakeholders.
Our team monitors several key security elements, including Microsoft Defender alerts, Sentinel SIEM events, and Entra ID sign-in risk. We triage and respond to security incidents effectively.
Additionally, we provide monthly Secure Score reports that include:
EPC Group offers managed Microsoft services starting at $5,000/month. The pricing depends on several factors:
Most enterprise clients typically spend between $10,000–$25,000/month for comprehensive 24/7 management.
All tiers include 24/7 monitoring. For P1 and P2 incidents, we provide after-hours human response as a standard service.
P3 and P4 incidents are handled during business hours. However, clients can request extended coverage if needed.
EPC Group begins every engagement with a 2-week environment assessment. During this time, we:
After this assessment, we take on full managed services responsibility on a mutually agreed date.
Yes, our managed services agreements include the entire Microsoft stack in one contract. You do not need separate agreements for Azure infrastructure and M365 administration.
This means:
EPC Group monitors Microsoft 365 Copilot usage to ensure compliance with governance standards. We track prompt quality metrics and manage sensitivity labels. Additionally, we oversee DLP policies to protect data accessed by Copilot.
Copilot governance is part of our full-stack managed services agreements.
EPC Group has important Microsoft Solutions Partner designations. Less than 50 firms globally hold this credential. Our team has completed over 10,000 enterprise Microsoft projects in the last since 1997.
We focus on:
EPC Group offers managed Microsoft services around the clock for enterprise organizations. We provide full-stack coverage and SLA accountability. Our team has extensive knowledge of Microsoft products.
Our services start at $5,000/month.
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