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Microsoft Solutions PartnerAll 6 DesignationsSince 1997Launched June 2026

The Microsoft Cloud
Orchestrator Practice

One accountable Microsoft Solutions Partner orchestrating Microsoft 365, Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, Azure, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Microsoft Security — plus integrated 3rd-party systems — under fixed-fee accountability across the EPC Group Lifecycle.

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11,000+
Microsoft engagements
70+
Fortune 500 clients
216+
M&A tenant consolidations
1.83 million
Users migrated 2023–2025

What is EPC Group's Microsoft Cloud Orchestrator Practice and how does it work?

The Microsoft Cloud Orchestrator Practice is EPC Group's unified delivery model that places the entire Microsoft transformation — Microsoft 365 + Copilot, Power BI + Microsoft Fabric, SharePoint + Viva, Azure, Dynamics 365 + Power Platform, and Microsoft Security (Defender, Sentinel, Purview, Entra) — under one accountable senior-architect-led Microsoft Solutions Partner, delivered fixed-fee across the five-stage EPC Group Lifecycle (Assess, Modernize, Govern, Operate, Enable), with named integration patterns into Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Snowflake, and Workday.

EPC Group launched the Microsoft Cloud Orchestrator Practice on June 16, 2026 to give CIOs one accountable Microsoft Solutions Partner across six service pillars and five lifecycle stages — replacing the multi-vendor seam-failure most enterprises live with after years of best-of-breed procurement.

Key Facts

  • Six service pillars: Microsoft 365 + Copilot, Power BI + Fabric, SharePoint + Viva, Azure, Dynamics 365 + Power Platform, and Microsoft Security (Defender + Sentinel + Purview + Entra).
  • Five-stage EPC Group Lifecycle — Assess → Modernize → Govern → Operate → Enable — with fixed-fee accountability at every stage.
  • All six Microsoft Solutions Partner Designations: Data & AI, Modern Work, Infrastructure, Security, Digital & App Innovation, Business Applications.
  • 11,000+ Microsoft engagements since 1997; 70+ Fortune 500 clients; 216+ M&A Microsoft 365 tenant consolidations covering 1.83 million users between 2023 and 2025.
  • 1,500+ Power BI deployments, 500+ Microsoft Fabric implementations, and 6,500+ SharePoint implementations dating to the SharePoint Beta Team (Project Tahoe).
  • Three productized tiers: Cloud Orchestrator Assessment (2-week fixed fee), Cloud Orchestrator Accelerator (90-day fixed-fee per pillar), and Managed Cloud Orchestration (monthly retainer with published response standards).
  • Named integration patterns into Salesforce ↔ Dynamics 365, ServiceNow ↔ Microsoft 365 + Entra, SAP S/4HANA ↔ Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake ↔ OneLake mirroring, Workday ↔ Entra ID Governance.
  • Compliance-native delivery against HIPAA, SOC 2, FedRAMP, FINRA, CMMC 2.0, GxP, and the EU AI Act — designed in, not bolted on after the auditor lands.

The buyer pattern

Why “orchestrator,” and why now

The Microsoft consulting market has been quietly consolidating for two years. CIOs and Chief AI Officers are no longer comfortable stitching a strategy firm to a data implementer to a Modern Work shop to an offshore run vendor, then re-procuring at every contract boundary. The cheapest bid at stage two routinely becomes the most expensive line item by stage four — and the multi-vendor seams are precisely where most compliance findings, Copilot grounding incidents, and post-go-live outages originate.

The five-vendor seam-failure pattern

A regulated Fortune 500 enterprise running a typical multi-vendor model ends up with:

  • 1.Strategy firm writing a Microsoft target-state slide deck that no engineer is accountable for delivering.
  • 2.Big 4 data integrator billing T&M to build a Fabric platform that does not meet the governance posture the auditor expects.
  • 3.Modern Work integrator rolling out Copilot without coordinating Purview classification, sensitivity labels, or Communication Compliance with the data team.
  • 4.Offshore run vendor operating tenants and capacities at the cheapest cost, with no architectural authority when something breaks.
  • 5.Specialty security boutique stitched in after a CISO-level incident — fixing the seams the first four vendors left open.

Five vendors. Five SOWs. Five PMOs. Five different escalation paths. And every audit finding, every Copilot incident, every regulatory inquiry lands at a boundary between two of them — where each contract politely points at the other.

The orchestrator alternative

One accountable Microsoft Solutions Partner. One SOW per stage. One PMO. One senior architect whose name is on the document and stays on the call from costed roadmap through 24/7 operations. Governance is one Purview + Entra + Defender backbone instead of five. 3rd-party systems (Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Snowflake, Workday) are honored as system-of-record where the business has chosen them and orchestrated into the Microsoft fabric with named integration patterns — not replaced and not re-procured.

That is the Microsoft Cloud Orchestrator Practice. It is the delivery model EPC Group has been running since 1997 for 70+ Fortune 500 clients — codified, named, and productized in June 2026 so the buyer side has language for what they have been asking for.

The Practice

The six service pillars

Each pillar can be entered standalone or sequenced into a single multi-year orchestrator engagement under a unified SOW. Senior architects deliver every pillar — no juniors learning on the client's dime.

Pillar 1

Microsoft 365 + Copilot Productivity Foundation

The productivity foundation of the orchestrated estate — Microsoft 365 tenant operations, Teams platform engineering, Viva employee experience, and a Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout sequenced under the Governed AI on Microsoft Framework. EPC Group has executed 216+ M&A Microsoft 365 tenant migrations covering 1.83 million users between 2023 and 2025. Copilot is rolled out with named owners, Purview AI Hub guardrails, prompt and response Communication Compliance, and adoption telemetry against measurable business outcomes — not seat counts.

  • Microsoft 365 tenant rationalization, license posture, and identity strategy
  • Microsoft Teams platform engineering — voice, rooms, meetings, governance, app catalog
  • Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout with Purview AI Hub guardrails and Communication Compliance
  • Viva Connections, Learning, Engage, Insights, and Goals deployment
  • M&A tenant consolidation, identity reconciliation, sensitivity-label harmonization
Explore pillar
Pillar 2

Power BI + Microsoft Fabric Data + AI Platform

The orchestrated data and analytics platform — Microsoft Fabric end-to-end (OneLake, Lakehouse, Warehouse, Real-Time Intelligence, Data Factory, Direct Lake) and Power BI Center of Excellence design, semantic model engineering, certified dataset governance, capacity sizing, and tenant policy. Anchored by EPC Group’s 1,500+ Power BI deployments and Microsoft Fabric implementations at enterprise scale, with Synapse-to-Fabric and SSIS-to-Data-Factory migration playbooks built from production engagements.

  • Microsoft Fabric capacity sizing, workload routing, and OneLake architecture
  • Power BI Center of Excellence operating model and certified dataset governance
  • Synapse-to-Fabric and SSIS-to-Data-Factory migrations with parallel validation
  • Semantic model engineering — star schemas, DAX patterns, row-level and object-level security
  • Purview-anchored data catalog, classification, lineage, and DLP enforcement
Explore pillar
Pillar 3

SharePoint + Viva Modern Workplace

The orchestrated knowledge and collaboration layer — SharePoint Online modernization, modern intranet, information architecture, and Microsoft Viva employee experience. Backed by EPC Group’s 6,500+ SharePoint implementations dating to the SharePoint Beta Team (Project Tahoe), this pillar resolves the unmanaged-sprawl problem most enterprises live with after years of organic site creation and pre-empts the Copilot grounding problem before it becomes a board-level incident.

  • SharePoint Online modernization and classic-to-modern site migrations
  • Modern intranet, hub site architecture, navigation, and search configuration
  • Information architecture, content types, retention, and sensitivity-label strategy
  • Microsoft Viva Connections, Engage, and Learning integration with the SharePoint estate
  • Copilot grounding readiness — permissions audit, oversharing remediation, label hygiene
Explore pillar
Pillar 4

Azure Cloud + Hybrid Infrastructure

The orchestrated cloud and hybrid infrastructure layer — Azure landing zones aligned to the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework and Well-Architected Framework, hybrid identity, networking, and operations. EPC Group designs the Azure substrate that every other pillar of the Practice depends on — Fabric, Power BI Premium capacity, Copilot, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform all run cleanly because the platform underneath them is governed.

  • Azure landing zones aligned to Cloud Adoption Framework and Well-Architected pillars
  • Hybrid identity, ExpressRoute, VPN, hub-and-spoke networking, and DNS strategy
  • Azure governance — Management Groups, Policy, Blueprints, Cost Management, FinOps
  • Disaster recovery, business continuity, backup, and Site Recovery design
  • Azure Arc for hybrid and multi-cloud server and Kubernetes governance
Explore pillar
Pillar 5

Dynamics 365 + Power Platform Business Applications

The orchestrated business applications layer — Dynamics 365, Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Pages, and Microsoft Copilot Studio delivered under a Power Platform Center of Excellence with environment strategy, Dataverse data governance, application-lifecycle management, and the seven-layer agentic AI governance framework spanning Microsoft Entra non-human identity, decision boundaries, escalation rules, audit trails, monitoring, and named-owner accountability.

  • Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, and Finance & Operations design
  • Power Platform Center of Excellence — environment strategy, DLP, ALM, monitoring
  • Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Pages low-code application delivery
  • Microsoft Copilot Studio agents with seven-layer agentic AI governance
  • Dataverse data governance, security roles, and integration with Microsoft Fabric
Explore pillar
Pillar 6

Microsoft Security (Defender + Sentinel + Purview + Entra) Governance Backbone

The orchestrated security and governance backbone — Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Purview, and Microsoft Entra delivered as one integrated control plane across the entire Microsoft estate. This pillar is the reason the orchestrator model works for regulated enterprises — every other pillar is governed by the same identity, classification, monitoring, and policy fabric instead of five disconnected security stacks each defending its own slice.

  • Microsoft Defender XDR — endpoint, identity, M365, cloud, and IoT threat protection
  • Microsoft Sentinel SIEM and SOAR with playbooks, watchlists, and threat intelligence
  • Microsoft Purview — sensitivity labels, retention, DLP, eDiscovery, Insider Risk, AI Hub
  • Microsoft Entra ID + Entra ID Governance — conditional access, PIM, Verified ID, External ID
  • Compliance frameworks mapped to HIPAA, SOC 2, FedRAMP, FINRA, CMMC 2.0, GxP, EU AI Act
Explore pillar

Methodology

The EPC Group Lifecycle — Assess → Modernize → Govern → Operate → Enable

The six service pillars are delivered across the five stages of The EPC Group Lifecycle. Each stage carries a fixed-fee outcome — discovery is bounded, modernization is delivered by the architect who scoped it, governance is designed in rather than bolted on, run-state is co-managed 24/7, and enablement is measured by business outcomes rather than training completions. For the broader digital transformation context this Practice sits inside, see the Microsoft Digital Transformation hub.

01Assess

Every orchestrator engagement begins with a fixed-fee assessment. Senior architects produce a costed Microsoft roadmap, a target architecture across all six pillars, and a board-ready decision package — typically in two to six weeks depending on scope.

Deliverables
  • •Current-state inventory across M365, Azure, Power BI, Fabric, SharePoint, Dynamics, Power Platform
  • •Target architecture spanning all six pillars and adjacent 3rd-party systems
  • •Workload sequencing, dependency map, and total cost of ownership model
  • •Costed roadmap by quarter — capex vs opex, license rationalization, Microsoft voucher subsidies
Outcomes
  • Discovery cost is bounded by a fixed fee
  • Decisions, not slides, are the deliverable
  • Board-ready business case in weeks, not quarters
02Modernize

Roadmaps become production systems. The same senior architects who scoped the work own the build through go-live across Azure, Fabric, Power BI, SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform — with no offshore handoff.

Deliverables
  • •Azure landing zones aligned to CAF and Well-Architected
  • •Microsoft Fabric data platforms and Power BI semantic models
  • •Microsoft 365 + SharePoint modernization and tenant consolidation
  • •Dynamics 365 and Power Platform builds under the Power Platform CoE
Outcomes
  • Production systems delivered by the architect who scoped the work
  • Senior-architect-only delivery — no juniors learning on the client dime
  • Parallel validation patterns for migrations — no big-bang cutover risk
03Govern

Modernization without governance is technical debt with a longer fuse. Governance is anchored on Microsoft Purview for data and AI, Microsoft Entra for identity, and Microsoft Defender for threat protection — all mapped to a named regulatory regime with audit-traceable controls.

Deliverables
  • •Microsoft Purview sensitivity labels, retention, DLP, AI Hub, and Insider Risk
  • •Microsoft Entra identity governance, conditional access, PIM, Verified ID
  • •Microsoft Defender XDR across endpoints, identity, M365, cloud, and IoT
  • •Copilot guardrails — prompt filtering, sensitivity-aware grounding, audit logs
Outcomes
  • Governance designed in, not bolted on after the auditor lands
  • Compliance mapped to HIPAA, SOC 2, FedRAMP, FINRA, CMMC 2.0, GxP, EU AI Act
  • Board-defensible AI governance posture before Copilot reaches end users
04Operate

The stage most consultancies do not offer. EPC Group Operate is a 24/7 co-managed model where the same senior architects who built the platform stay on retainer with a named escalation path, monthly health reports, and quarterly optimization cycles.

Deliverables
  • •Co-Managed Power BI — workspace governance, gateway operations, refresh monitoring
  • •Co-Managed Microsoft Fabric — capacity optimization and pipeline observability
  • •Co-Managed Microsoft 365 — tenant operations, license health, Copilot adoption telemetry
  • •Co-Managed Azure — FinOps, landing-zone drift detection, patching, DR exercises
Outcomes
  • 24/7 coverage with published response standards
  • Named senior-architect escalation — same humans, never offshore handoff
  • Year-two drift prevention — the most expensive failure mode of a Microsoft program
05Enable

Technology lands when humans use it. Enable is an adoption practice — role-based learning paths, Center of Excellence operating models, executive change-management coaching, and Microsoft Viva integration so the platform sticks after EPC Group leaves the room.

Deliverables
  • •Role-based learning paths — executives, analysts, citizen developers, IT, end users
  • •Center of Excellence operating models — Power BI, Fabric, Power Platform, Copilot
  • •Data literacy programs and Microsoft Viva Learning integration
  • •Executive sponsor enablement and adoption telemetry against business outcomes
Outcomes
  • Adoption measured by business outcomes, not training completions
  • CoE governance institutionalized inside the client organization
  • The platform survives the consulting engagement

Beyond Microsoft

Orchestration extends to integrated 3rd-party systems

Every regulated enterprise runs Microsoft alongside a portfolio of best-in-class 3rd-party systems where the business has already decided system-of-record. The orchestrator does not replace those investments — it integrates them under named patterns so the Microsoft fabric (Fabric for analytics, Purview for governance, Entra for identity, Copilot for AI) remains the unifying plane.

Dynamics 365 Sales / Customer ServiceSalesforce Sales Cloud / Service Cloud

Bidirectional Account, Contact, Opportunity, and Case sync via Power Automate or Azure Logic Apps, with Salesforce as system-of-record where mandated and D365 as the Microsoft-stack analytics target.

Microsoft 365 + Entra IDServiceNow ITSM

Entra ID provisioning for ServiceNow, Teams + ServiceNow Virtual Agent integration, and Power Automate flows that bridge Approvals, change tickets, and Microsoft 365 service desk workflows.

Microsoft Fabric + PurviewSAP S/4HANA + SAP ECC

SAP CDC connectors into Fabric Data Factory, Purview unified catalog spanning SAP and Fabric assets, and Power BI semantic models on top of OneLake mirrored SAP data.

Microsoft Fabric (OneLake) + Power BISnowflake / Databricks

Snowflake or Databricks mirroring into OneLake via Fabric shortcuts, federated query patterns, and Direct Lake Power BI semantic models avoiding double-storage costs.

Microsoft Entra ID + Entra ID GovernanceWorkday HCM

Workday-driven joiner-mover-leaver into Entra ID, automated license assignment, group-based access provisioning, and audit-traceable identity lifecycle across the Microsoft estate.

An honest caveat: EPC Group is a Microsoft pure-play consultancy by charter. We do not lead Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Snowflake, Databricks, or Workday transformations — we orchestrate to them. When a client's strategic anchor is genuinely AWS or Google Cloud rather than Azure, we say so during Assess and recommend a different partner.

Accountability

One name, one SOW, one PMO, one phone number

The orchestrator model only works if accountability is concrete. Every Microsoft Cloud Orchestrator engagement carries a named senior architect — usually Errin O'Connor or a designated EPC Group partner — whose name appears in the SOW and whose mobile is in the escalation runbook. There is one PMO covering the whole estate, one set of monthly executive readouts, one fixed-fee accelerator option per pillar, and a transparent escalation ladder that does not require the CIO to introduce two vendors to each other to solve a cross-pillar problem.

Named senior architect

The architect who scopes the work in Assess is the same person delivering it in Modernize, governing it in Govern, escalating it in Operate, and championing adoption in Enable. No inverted pyramid. No offshore handoff after sales.

One SOW per stage, fixed fee

Fixed-fee scoping at every stage removes the change-order incentive that contaminates T&M. When the architect who priced the work has to deliver it, scope estimates get honest.

One PMO across all six pillars

Cross-pillar dependencies (Copilot grounding needs Purview; Fabric needs Entra; Power Platform needs Dataverse) are managed inside the same PMO instead of escalated between vendors.

Transparent escalation

Documented escalation ladder ending at Errin O'Connor. The Founder & Chief AI Architect of EPC Group is reachable to a Fortune 500 CIO during a board-level Copilot incident. That is the orchestrator promise.

Outcomes

What success looks like

The orchestrator model is judged by board-visible outcomes, not by activity. Five outcome categories define what a well-run Microsoft Cloud Orchestrator engagement looks like across the EPC Group portfolio of 70+ Fortune 500 clients and 11,000+ engagements.

216+
M&A tenant consolidations

Success looks like a single Microsoft 365 tenant covering the post-merger organization within four quarters, with identity reconciled in Entra, sensitivity labels harmonized in Purview, and Copilot governance posture in place before the rollout reaches end users.

1.83 million
Users migrated 2023–2025

Success looks like measured user-experience metrics — mailbox sync time, Teams call quality, SharePoint search relevance — equal to or better than pre-migration baselines within 30 days of cutover, with parallel validation rather than big-bang risk.

70+
Fortune 500 clients

Success looks like a board-defensible Microsoft AI governance posture, Power BI semantic models trusted by the CFO, and a Copilot rollout measured against business outcomes (cycle-time reduction, ticket-volume reduction) rather than license utilization.

1,500+
Power BI deployments

Success looks like a Power BI Center of Excellence with certified-dataset coverage above 70% of board-reported metrics, managed capacity within published utilization bands, and self-service analytics that does not erode the governance posture.

500+
Microsoft Fabric implementations

Success looks like one OneLake landed before the first report ships, Fabric capacities sized against published utilization patterns, and Purview lineage spanning source systems through Power BI dashboards — visible to the auditor without a manual evidence collection.

11,000+
Total Microsoft engagements

Success looks like the 1997-founded delivery pattern that produced that number: senior-architect-led, fixed-fee, governance-native, with G2 Leader seven consecutive quarters status and a 4.4/5 G2 rating across 15 verified reviews and seven consecutive G2 Leader quarters.

Honest tradeoffs

Orchestrator model vs the alternatives

The orchestrator model is not the right answer for every organization. The honest comparison below shows where the EPC Group Microsoft Cloud Orchestrator Practice fits relative to Big 4 consultancies, boutique Microsoft shops, offshore staff-augmentation models, and internal-team augmentation.

CriterionEPC OrchestratorBig 4 (Accenture / Deloitte)Boutique MicrosoftOffshore staff-augInternal team
One accountable senior architect across all stagesYes — same architect from Assess through OperateNo — partner sells, manager scopes, offshore deliversSometimes — depends on practice depthNo — staff augmentation modelDepends on staffing depth
Microsoft stack depth (all six Solutions Partner Designations)Yes — Data & AI, Modern Work, Infrastructure, Security, Digital & App Innovation, Business ApplicationsYes — but split across hundreds of practicesUsually 1–2 designationsYes but execution-only, not architectureRarely all six
Regulated-industry readiness (HIPAA, FedRAMP, CMMC, FINRA, GxP)Yes — production references across all five regimesYes — but cost premium for regulated workstreamsVaries widelyLimited — usually not lead deliveryDepends on in-house compliance team
Senior-architect ratio100% senior — no juniors learning on the client dimeInverted pyramid — junior-heavy deliverySenior-skewed but bench depth variesMostly junior, time-zone-shiftedMixed — depends on hiring market
Time to first measurable outcome2–6 weeks for Assess deliverable; 8–12 weeks for first Modernize milestone8–16 weeks for first deliverable — long discovery4–10 weeksDependent on internal architecture leadershipVariable — competing with day jobs
Pricing modelFixed-fee per stage; productized accelerators; predictable retainer for OperateTime & materials with change-orders; large initial feesMixed — often T&M with capPer-hour bodyshop — incentive misalignedFully loaded cost is rarely measured

Productized engagement model

Three tiers across the lifecycle

The Practice is sold as productized engagements rather than T&M. Each tier maps to a stage in the lifecycle — Assess, Modernize, and Operate — and each tier carries a fixed-fee or productized retainer envelope so finance, procurement, and the CIO can plan.

Tier 1

Cloud Orchestrator Assessment

2 weeksFixed fee

A two-week senior-architect assessment that produces a costed Microsoft roadmap, a target architecture across all six pillars, and a board-ready decision package. Designed to bound discovery cost and surface the decisions that unlock a Modernize program — not a slide deck of options.

  • Current-state inventory across all six Microsoft pillars and key 3rd-party systems
  • Target architecture, workload sequencing, and risk register
  • Compliance mapping (HIPAA, SOC 2, FedRAMP, FINRA, CMMC, GxP) to the target state
  • Costed roadmap by quarter — capex/opex split and Microsoft voucher subsidies identified
  • Executive readout — board-ready decision package with named recommendations
Talk to an architect
Tier 2

Cloud Orchestrator Accelerator

90 daysFixed fee per pillar; bundled discount when 3+ pillars are sequenced

A 90-day fixed-fee Modernize engagement against one or more of the six pillars. Production-grade deliverables — not pilots, not POCs — built on the architecture set during the Assessment and governed by Purview, Entra, and Defender from day one.

  • Pillar-scoped Modernize sprints with senior-architect-only delivery
  • Purview, Entra, and Defender governance applied from day one
  • Production cutover with parallel validation patterns — no big-bang risk
  • Adoption telemetry instrumented at go-live
  • Operate-readiness handoff package — runbooks, escalation paths, named owners
Talk to an architect
Tier 3

Managed Cloud Orchestration

Monthly retainerProductized retainer with published response standards

A monthly retainer that places the orchestrated estate under EPC Group 24/7 Co-Managed operations. The same senior architects who built the platform stay on the account, escalations route to named humans, and quarterly optimization cycles keep the estate from drifting into year-two technical debt.

  • 24/7 monitoring with published response standards
  • Named senior-architect escalation path — same humans, never offshore handoff
  • Monthly executive health report and quarterly optimization cycle
  • Capacity, FinOps, license, and adoption optimization included in retainer
  • Governance posture continuously revalidated against compliance frameworks
Talk to an architect

Regulated-industry depth

Compliance-native, not compliance-retrofitted

The Microsoft Cloud Orchestrator Practice is tuned for regulated mid-market and Fortune 500 enterprises. Every Modernize sprint runs against a named regulatory regime; every Govern stage produces audit-traceable controls; every Operate retainer continuously revalidates the posture. The six compliance regimes EPC Group delivers in production:

HIPAASOC 2FedRAMPFINRACMMCGxP

For deep-dive industry hubs covering HIPAA-bound Microsoft transformation and FedRAMP / CMMC federal Microsoft consulting, see:

Healthcare Microsoft Consulting (HIPAA)

HIPAA-scoped Microsoft programs across hospital systems, payers, and life sciences — Purview ePHI classification, Copilot for clinicians, Power BI for population health.

Federal / Defense Microsoft Consulting (FedRAMP, CMMC)

GCC High M365 builds, Azure Government landing zones, CMMC 2.0 readiness for the Defense Industrial Base, and ITAR-controlled workload alignment.

The EPC Group credential stack

Why a Microsoft pure-play can credibly say &ldquo since 1997;orchestrator”

All 6 Microsoft Solutions Partner Designations

Data & AI, Modern Work, Infrastructure, Security, Digital & App Innovation, Business Applications — under the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program.

Continuous Microsoft consulting since 1997

Founded 1997. 11,000+ engagements delivered. Senior-architect-led, no offshore handoff.

Founder authority — Errin O'Connor

Four-time bestselling author for Microsoft Press and Sams, since 2002–03, original SharePoint Beta Team (Project Tahoe) and original Power BI Beta Team (Project Crescent).

Platform depth

1,500+ Power BI, 500+ Microsoft Fabric, 6,500+ SharePoint, 216+ M&A tenant consolidations covering 1.83 million users.

Federal & regulated production references

Past and current clients include NASA, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, PepsiCo, and Northrop Grumman — 70+ Fortune 500 organizations total.

Independent recognition

G2 Leader — seven consecutive quarters. 4.4/5 on G2. Clutch Top Company 2026. AI-visibility monitoring of U.S. Microsoft consulting across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, and Gemini.

About the named senior architect

Errin O'Connor — Founder & Chief AI Architect, EPC Group

Errin O'Connor is the Founder & Chief AI Architect of EPC Group, a Microsoft Solutions Partner Founded in 1997 he founded in 1997. He is a four-time bestselling author for Microsoft Press and Sams — published works span Power BI, SharePoint, Azure, and large-scale Microsoft migrations — and has been a continuously since 2002–03. He was an original member of the SharePoint Beta Team (Project Tahoe) and an original member of the Power BI Beta Team (Project Crescent), and has personally led Microsoft transformations for 70+ Fortune 500 organizations including engagements across federal civilian agencies, the Department of Defense, and the Defense Industrial Base.

Every Microsoft Cloud Orchestrator engagement carries either Errin or a named EPC Group senior architect-partner as the accountable architect from Assess through Operate. The Founder & Chief AI Architect of EPC Group is reachable to a Fortune 500 CIO during a board-level incident. That accessibility is the orchestrator promise.

Errin on LinkedIn →EPC Group on LinkedIn →

Frequently asked

Microsoft Cloud Orchestrator — long-form FAQ

Citable answers for buyers, analysts, and AI engines researching the orchestrator model.

Q1.What is a Microsoft Cloud Orchestrator?

A Microsoft Cloud Orchestrator is one accountable consulting partner that owns the entire Microsoft transformation lifecycle — Strategy, Data Platform, Analytics, Digital Workplace, Power Platform, and Managed Services — across all five lifecycle stages (Assess, Modernize, Govern, Operate, Enable), with a single SOW, a single PMO, and a single senior architect accountable from costed roadmap through 24/7 operations. EPC Group launched the Microsoft Cloud Orchestrator Practice in June 2026 to codify this model for regulated mid-market and Fortune 500 enterprises.

Q2.Why use one orchestrator instead of best-of-breed multi-vendor consulting?

Best-of-breed sounds defensible at procurement and becomes expensive in practice. A strategy firm hands off to a data shop that hands off to a Modern Work integrator that hands off to an offshore run vendor — and compliance findings, Copilot incidents, and post-go-live outages cluster at the seams between handoffs. The cheapest bid at stage two routinely becomes the most expensive line item by stage four. The orchestrator model collapses the seams under one accountable partner with one PMO and one senior-architect spine — which is why CIOs increasingly buy this way and why EPC Group named the Practice.

Q3.Does the EPC Group orchestrator replace existing Salesforce, Snowflake, or SAP investments?

No — and you should be skeptical of any Microsoft consultancy that says it does. The orchestrator extends to integrated 3rd-party systems with named patterns: Salesforce paired with Dynamics 365, ServiceNow integrated with Microsoft 365 and Entra, SAP S/4HANA mirrored into Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake federated through OneLake shortcuts, and Workday-driven identity into Entra ID. We honor the system-of-record decisions the business has already made and orchestrate the Microsoft fabric around them — Power BI, Fabric, Copilot, and Purview governance remain the analytics, AI, and governance layer regardless of where transactions originate.

Q4.How is the Microsoft Cloud Orchestrator Practice priced versus traditional time-and-materials?

The Practice is priced as a productized engagement, not as T&M. Three tiers cover the lifecycle: the Cloud Orchestrator Assessment is a two-week fixed-fee engagement; the Cloud Orchestrator Accelerator is a 90-day fixed-fee Modernize sprint per pillar with bundled discounts when three or more pillars are sequenced; and Managed Cloud Orchestration is a monthly retainer with published response standards. Fixed-fee accountability removes the change-order incentive and aligns the consultancy with outcomes instead of hours billed.

Q5.Who is the named senior architect on my orchestrator engagement?

Every Practice engagement carries a named senior architect whose name appears in the SOW and stays accountable from Assess through Operate. Founder Errin O’Connor — four-time bestselling author for Microsoft Press and Sams, since 2002–03, original SharePoint Beta Team member (Project Tahoe), and original Power BI Beta Team member (Project Crescent) — personally reviews every Practice engagement architecture. EPC Group does not use the inverted-pyramid model where a partner sells, a manager scopes, and offshore delivers. The architect who scopes the work owns it through go-live and Run.

Q6.How is governance handled across Microsoft and 3rd-party systems?

Governance is the backbone of the orchestrator model. Microsoft Purview is the unified catalog, classification, lineage, and policy plane across both Microsoft and registered 3rd-party assets — Snowflake, Databricks, SAP, and Salesforce data can all be brought under Purview discovery. Microsoft Entra ID and Entra ID Governance provide identity, conditional access, and privileged-identity management across Microsoft and SaaS surfaces. Microsoft Defender XDR and Microsoft Sentinel provide unified threat detection across endpoints, identity, M365, cloud, and SaaS. The result is one control plane instead of five disconnected security stacks each defending its own slice.

Q7.When does the orchestrator approach NOT fit?

The orchestrator model fits regulated mid-market and Fortune 500 enterprises that have decided Microsoft is the strategic anchor for their cloud, data, and AI estate. It does not fit organizations that are still platform-shopping at the executive level, that are committed to an AWS-anchored or GCP-anchored data platform with Microsoft 365 as a productivity afterthought, or that need a single 6–12 week tactical project with no Run-stage relationship. EPC Group is direct about this in the Assess stage — if the orchestrator model is not the right fit, the assessment surfaces that and recommends a narrower engagement.

Q8.How long to first measurable outcome from an orchestrator engagement?

The Cloud Orchestrator Assessment delivers a costed roadmap, target architecture, and board-ready decision package in two weeks. The first Cloud Orchestrator Accelerator pillar reaches a production milestone within 8–12 weeks of kickoff — typically a measurable improvement in a board-visible metric (Copilot adoption against business outcomes, Power BI certified-dataset coverage, M&A tenant consolidation completion, Purview classification coverage of sensitive data, or Sentinel mean-time-to-detect for a named threat class). Run-stage outcomes are reported monthly under the Managed Cloud Orchestration retainer.

Continue the journey

Related EPC Group hubs

Digital Transformation Hub — EPC Group Lifecycle deep dive
Microsoft Power BI Expertise
Microsoft Fabric Expertise
Microsoft 365 Consulting
SharePoint Consulting
Azure Consulting Services
Data & AI Governance (Purview)
Healthcare Microsoft Consulting (HIPAA)
Federal Microsoft Consulting (FedRAMP / CMMC)
Best AI Consulting Firms — Microsoft / Azure 2026

Talk to an EPC Microsoft
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