Project work
Some work has a startand an end
A migration, an office move, a merger, the remediation list an assessment produced. It does not fit inside a monthly agreement and it should not pretend to — so it runs as its own piece of work, with its own scope and its own end.
This page will not tell you what a project like yours typically costs. There is no honest source for that number, and the reason why is the most useful thing here.
What counts as a project
Named for the change, not the technology
An owner does not have “a tenant-to-tenant migration”. They have two firms becoming one. These are the transitions we are usually called for, and what sets each of them off.
Moving a firm's matter and document systems
Law firms
Rarely a move to the cloud in the abstract. It is matters, documents, email, permissions, templates and the integrations between them — and the permissions are the part that takes the time, because the old system's answer to 'who can see this' is often nobody's answer at all.
Usually starts with — Legacy software being replaced, remote working, or consolidating platforms
Replacing a practice-management or imaging environment
Medical and dental clinics
The one people most often assume is a database copy and most often is not. Source and destination frequently disagree about image format, metadata and what a complete portable record even contains, which means conversion, partial manual transfer, or keeping the old system readable for a while.
Usually starts with — Vendor change, an interoperability problem, or combining practices
Closing the gaps a security assessment found
Accounting and CPA practices, financial advisory, clinics
A gap assessment produces a list. The list becomes work: asset and data inventory, identity and access changes, multi-factor deployment, encryption and configuration remediation, logging, backup changes and the documentation that proves it happened. The remedy depends on the risk rather than arriving as one standard bundle.
Usually starts with — A written security plan review, a HIPAA risk analysis, or a failed questionnaire
Building an incident response capability that exists on paper and in practice
SEC-registered advisory firms
Written incident response policies, a data and vendor inventory good enough to answer 'whose information was in there', and a notification process somebody has actually walked through. Smaller advisory firms passed their compliance date in June 2026, which turns planning work into remediation work.
Usually starts with — Regulation S-P, examination readiness, or an insurer asking
Moving off something that stops being supported
Anyone still running the affected version
Server upgrades, workload moves, application remediation or retirement. The date is the trigger to find out what you are running — not proof that you need a project. Plenty of firms discover they are unaffected, and that is a good outcome from an afternoon's work.
Usually starts with — A published end-of-support date
Combining or separating two Microsoft environments
Any firm that merges, acquires, or loses a partner
Identity, email and files across two tenants. Worth knowing before you start: Teams, Groups, Planner, device management and distribution lists commonly fall outside the automated migration path and need recreating by hand. That is not a surprise if somebody says it in week one.
Usually starts with — A merger, an acquisition, or a partner buyout
Putting wire and identity verification inside the workflow
Real estate, title and escrow
Not security training with a different name. It is integration work: verification steps built into the transaction and closing platforms so the check is part of the process rather than something a person is asked to remember on the day money moves.
Usually starts with — A fraud-control policy change, an underwriter requirement, or a new platform
Moving, opening or closing an office
Everyone
Network, connectivity, hardware, phones and the cutover itself, usually against a date that cannot move. We do this work regularly. Worth saying plainly that no independent source establishes what it typically costs a firm of your size — which is exactly why we quote it after looking rather than before.
Usually starts with — A lease ending, growth, or consolidating sites
Dates that are already set
Four deadlines, and who they actually apply to
Set by other people, not us, and each links to its source. A date is a reason to check what you are running. Firms regularly find they are unaffected.
Office LTSC 2021 reaches end of support. No further security updates, bug fixes or technical support.
Upgrade path, application compatibility testing, workstation deployment.
Applies to — Firms running the perpetual-licence Office LTSC 2021, not Microsoft 365 subscriptions.
Windows Server 2016 reaches end of support.
Server upgrade, workload migration, application remediation or retirement.
Applies to — Anyone still running a 2016 server, on premises or hosted.
Revised Section 504 deadline for web and mobile accessibility, conforming to WCAG 2.1 AA.
Accessibility audit and remediation of websites, applications and documents in scope.
Applies to — Recipients of HHS federal financial assistance with 15 or more employees — not automatically every clinic or non-profit. Those with fewer than 15 employees have until 10 May 2028.
SQL Server 2017 reaches end of support.
Database and application upgrade, or replacing the vendor application that depends on it.
Applies to — Usually invisible to the firm — it is typically underneath a line-of-business application rather than something anyone chose.
Not sure whether any of these touch you? That is an inventory question, and the answer usually takes an afternoon. The free external scan is a reasonable place to start, and the full assessment produces the asset inventory that answers it properly.
How it is priced
Billed for the time it takes, with the reasoning published
Project work is billed for the time it actually takes, at the published project rate, as it is worked. Long-running work — a software transition, a phased move — runs as one ticket kept open for the duration rather than a package quoted up front.
We cannot tell you how many hours your project will take before looking at it. We can tell you exactly what an hour costs, and we publish it. So here is the multiplication, with the part we do not know left for you to move.
Labour at $250/hr
$10,000
This is multiplication, not an estimate. It does not know what you run, what condition it is in, or what it depends on — and neither does anyone else who has not looked. Hardware, licences and third-party costs sit on top of it.
Why not a fixed price
Fixed price works best when four things can all be established before work starts: what is being delivered, the condition of what you already have, how success will be tested, and what the job depends on. Plenty of the work firms ask us for cannot honestly satisfy all four until somebody has looked.
A provider quoting a fixed price against unknown conditions has three options and only three: price in a contingency you pay for whether or not it is needed, narrow the scope until the risky parts fall outside it, or absorb the loss. The first two are far more common than the third, and both are usually invisible at the point of signing.
The other side of it
The trade runs the other way too, and it is worth saying: billing hourly moves the quantity risk to you. Without controls that means less cost certainty, and less contractual pressure on us to be quick. Which is why the controls below exist, and why we would rather be judged on them than on a number invented before anyone looked at your systems.
Where discovery has already removed the uncertainty — a standard deployment with known quantities, an assessment with a defined deliverable, equipment installed in a site already surveyed — a fixed price genuinely serves you better, and we will offer one.
What stops it running away
Hourly billing, with the accountability attached
The real question about hourly work is not “will you guarantee the number”. It is “what stops me losing control of it”. These are the answers, and the last one is the only one that is a control rather than a promise.
A written objective and an acceptance condition
Agreed before work starts, so what counts as finished cannot be redefined halfway through by either of us.
Assumptions and exclusions, written down first
The things we are taking on trust are listed where you can read them, rather than surfacing later as a reason the estimate moved.
An estimate given as a range
A single figure for work nobody has scoped is a guess wearing a suit. A range with its reasoning attached is more use to you.
Discovery before anything irreversible
Data condition, identities, integrations and licensing get looked at before a cutover, because that is when finding a problem is still cheap.
Burn reporting that separates work from waiting
Hours worked and days elapsed are different numbers and we report them separately. Most of the gap is usually a third party or a decision, and you should be able to see which.
An authorisation threshold
We do not materially exceed the estimate without telling you first and getting an answer. No invoice should ever be the first you hear of it.
Stop-go authority at checkpoints
You can halt the project at a checkpoint. This is the one that makes the rest of it real — everything above is a promise, this is a control you hold.
Before you commit to anything
Nine questions that decide the size of the job
Anyone can answer these in advance, including a provider who is not us. If somebody quotes a project without asking most of them, the number is padded or wrong and you cannot tell which.
How much data is there, and is it clean?
Correcting data while a migration runs is the single most reliable way to turn two weeks into two months. Peer-reviewed work on migration outcomes puts data quality first among the things that decide whether one succeeds.
What cannot be exported at all?
Ownership history, prior versions, comments, advanced metadata, explicit-deny permissions, auditing and sharing settings are commonly left behind by automated migration — Microsoft documents this about its own service. Whether that matters to you is a question only you can answer.
Which identities and permissions have to survive?
If a target account does not exist, its permissions do not migrate. Delegate access and calendar permissions frequently need doing again by hand. This is the most common source of 'it worked, but nobody can see anything'.
What authenticates against the thing being moved?
Line-of-business applications, scanners, phone systems and door entry all have a habit of quietly depending on a server nobody thinks of as important until it is switched off.
Are the licences transferable, or must they be bought again?
Some are, some are not, and the answer is contractual rather than technical. It changes the cost of the project and occasionally the choice of destination.
What must be preserved for legal, clinical or regulatory reasons?
Retention obligations outlive systems. A migration that satisfies everyone on the day and loses a records trail is a problem that surfaces years later, usually when somebody asks for it.
Which third parties control an export or a cutover date?
Vendor responsiveness is a genuine schedule risk rather than an excuse. Microsoft states plainly it cannot guarantee migration speed, and that third-party interface changes can delay or suspend work.
Who at your firm can make a decision, and how quickly?
The most common cause of elapsed time is not engineering. It is a question sitting in somebody's inbox during a busy week.
What does success actually look like?
Agreed before the work starts, so 'done' cannot quietly move. Without it a project stays permanently almost finished.
Straight answer
What we will not tell you
We will not tell you what a project like yours typically costs, because there is no honest source for that number. Every published figure we could find traces back to somebody selling the work — and one built from our own history would still be a different firm, different data, different systems.
We will not quote before discovery on work whose scope depends on the condition of what you already have. A number produced without looking is either padded or wrong, and you cannot tell which from the outside.
We will not tell you a lifecycle date means you need a project. It means it is worth finding out what you are running. Firms regularly discover they are unaffected, and an afternoon establishing that is a good outcome.
Have something with a date on it?
A lease ending, a system being retired, two firms becoming one. Tell us what has to be true by when, and we will tell you what is involved — including when the honest answer is that you do not need us for it.
Or call 1-855-966-2967