Projects and migrations
Microsoft 365 Commercial to GCC High
The migration a defense contractor makes when CUI enters the picture. It is a tenant-to-tenant move rather than an upgrade, and the order of operations matters more here than in any other migration we do.
The boundary comes first
The most expensive mistake in this migration is treating it as a data move. It is a scoping exercise that happens to involve moving data.
Before anything is copied, you need to know what is CUI, where it will live, who can reach it, and how that will be evidenced. Migrate first and design the boundary afterwards and you will do the migration twice — once to get there, once to fix what should never have been brought across.
What the work involves
- Validating eligibility. GCC High is not open to everyone and this is settled before anything else.
- Designing the CUI boundary — what is in scope, what stays out, and where the line is enforced.
- Provisioning the new tenant and licensing through an authorised partner.
- Checking your third-party applications actually support GCC High. Many do not.
- Migrating mail, files and identity tenant-to-tenant.
- Cutover, then decommissioning the commercial tenant on a deliberate schedule.
Commonly underestimated
That it is a separate tenant, not a setting. You cannot upgrade a commercial tenant into GCC High, and you cannot merge back afterwards without doing this again in reverse.
Feature parity. GCC High trails commercial Microsoft 365 on some services and release timing, and the third-party app ecosystem around it is substantially smaller. Anything your business depends on needs checking against that list before you commit.
The people cost. Users notice a tenant migration, and the ones who work with external partners notice most.
Related reading
Our shared responsibility matrix sets out which of the 110 NIST SP 800-171 controls typically sit with a provider and which stay with you — worth reading before any provider quotes this work.
How we scope this
We do not quote this work before seeing your environment. How long it takes and what it costs depend on what you already have, how much of it there is, and how quickly your side can make decisions — and a number produced without knowing those is a guess you would end up budgeting against.
What we will commit to is a start: work begins within five business days of signature. If a particular engagement cannot start inside that window, we say so before you sign.
More on this in what it costs. Ongoing support for this sits under our services.
Other projects
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Azure Virtual Desktop
A full Windows desktop delivered from Azure, so staff get the same environment from any device, anywhere, and it stays under your control rather than living on a laptop. Access is built on identity and conditional access rather than a VPN nobody wants to use.
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On-Premises to Microsoft 365
Email, files and identity moved off your own servers into Microsoft 365, including the part most migrations underestimate — deciding what does not come with you.
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Google Workspace to Microsoft 365
Mail, drive and identity moved across from Google, with the shared-drive structure mapped properly instead of dumped into someone's OneDrive.
Talk it through
Tell us what you're moving and what you're moving it from. Twenty minutes, no obligation.
Schedule a call