EPC Managed Microsoft Lifecycle

A break/fix MSP resets passwords, images laptops, and runs a tier-1 helpdesk. EPC Managed Microsoft Lifecycle operates the Microsoft data, governance, identity, and AI estate at the architecture level. Our on-call rotation is staffed by senior architects who can read a Fabric capacity dashboard, a Defender XDR incident graph, and an Entra sign-in log without asking what they are. We do not take device-support work. The retainer is a fixed-fee productized service with named SLAs, named outcomes per lifecycle stage, and a named senior architect as accountable lead — it is the productized counter to both break/fix MSP and endless time-and-materials consulting.

For Small and Medium tiers, the named architect is a partner-level senior architect from Errin O'Connor's bench — selected based on the dominant workload mix (Power BI / Fabric, SharePoint / Viva, Azure, Copilot, Security). For Large tier engagements, Errin O'Connor personally serves as principal architect, supported by a 3-to-5 person architect bench. Errin is a 4x Microsoft Press & Sams author with nearly three decades of Microsoft consulting leadership; partner-level architects on his bench average 12+ years of Microsoft-specific delivery experience and hold current Microsoft certifications across the relevant pillar. The named architect attends every fortnightly review, signs every quarterly executive briefing, and personally escalates P0 events.

Yes, with a tier-band re-evaluation. Adding a single workload within the current tier band is handled within the existing modernization quarterly slot. Adding a new Microsoft pillar (for example, your team buys Dynamics 365 mid-year) triggers a tier review — Small to Medium, or Medium to Large — with the new monthly fee taking effect the following quarter. Adding a major one-time event (a tenant migration, an M&A consolidation, a Power BI semantic model build-from-scratch) is handled as a separate fixed-fee SOW that runs in parallel with the retainer, not absorbed silently into it. Honest scope hygiene is part of the product.

If your estate is under 5,000 users with a single workload (for example, just Microsoft 365 + a small Power BI tenant), the Managed Microsoft Lifecycle product is probably the wrong fit. The better fit is one of EPC's fixed-fee accelerators — a 2-week assessment, a 90-day governance baseline, or a single Power BI / Fabric / SharePoint modernization project — followed by a fractional advisory retainer rather than a full lifecycle managed service. We will tell you that honestly during the scoping call instead of selling you a tier you do not need.

Yes. The product is compliance-native — built for HIPAA, SOC 2, FedRAMP, FINRA, CMMC, GxP, plus the EU AI Act and 21 CFR Part 11 for clinical research. Active healthcare engagements include organizations under signed BAAs. Federal-vertical engagements are GCC and GCC High aware (the service is FedRAMP-aligned at the methodology level; FedRAMP authorization itself attaches to underlying Microsoft cloud services, not to consulting service-lines — see our federal vertical hub for the full posture). Compliance posture is reported in every quarterly executive briefing alongside the estate health scorecard.

Five outcome categories, all reported in the quarterly executive briefing: (1) incident rate trend quarter-over-quarter; (2) Microsoft feature adoption velocity — how fast new Microsoft releases land in your estate; (3) Microsoft Secure Score + Identity Score deltas; (4) Copilot ROI by persona (license utilization, prompt volume, named persona-level value); (5) lifecycle stage maturity progression per active workload across Assess / Modernize / Govern / Operate / Enable. Each metric has a baseline taken in the first 90 days and a target that is renegotiated annually.

Yes, on quarter boundaries. If your estate contracts (a divestiture, a workload sunset, a license downsize), we re-evaluate the tier at the next quarter boundary and the new monthly fee takes effect the following quarter. No early-termination penalty for a good-faith downsize. The opposite case — silent tier creep where the architect quietly underdelivers as scope grows — is what the published tier bands and the quarterly executive briefing are designed to prevent.

Termination notice is 90 days. During the notice period we deliver a formal handoff package: the architecture-of-record document, the runbook library, the dashboard sources and DAX, the open-incident register, the active modernization roadmap, and the lifecycle stage maturity scorecard. No proprietary lock-in: every dashboard runs on your own Power BI / Fabric capacity; every policy lives in your own Purview / Defender / Entra tenant. The named architect runs a 4-week transition with your replacement provider or in-house team. The goal is that your estate is operable by anyone competent at the end of the handoff — not held hostage to EPC's continued engagement.