Microsoft 365 CSP · Petoskey, MI · Since 2015

Microsoft 365 — Set Up, Hardened, and Managed

We handle the migration, the licensing, the hardening, and the day-to-day administration so Microsoft 365 stops being something your team has to figure out alone. One bill, one team, one place to call.

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What We Actually Do

Four Parts of a Microsoft 365 Engagement

Most clients hire us for one of these four things and grow into the others over time. All four can be standalone projects, or bundled into an ongoing Microsoft 365 service plan.

Licensing & Billing

NTS is a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) — we sell, bill, and manage your licenses directly. One invoice from us instead of a Microsoft billing portal for your office manager to figure out. Adds, drops, and renewals handled.

Migration & Setup

Personal email, web-host email, on-prem Exchange, Google Workspace — we migrate your existing inbox, files, and team workflows into a properly configured Microsoft 365 tenant. Most engagements are either fresh tenant setup or cleanup of a tenant a client started on their own.

Tenant Hardening

We go beyond Microsoft’s defaults. Conditional Access policies, MFA enforced through a separate identity provider, sensible sharing limits, retention configured, and the security baseline that an auditor or insurance carrier would expect to see.

Ongoing Administration

Day-to-day: user adds and removes, license assignment, password resets, account lockouts, Outlook/OneDrive/SharePoint/Teams troubleshooting, application install help, and the rest of the small-but-constant work that keeps M365 actually usable for your team.

Beyond Microsoft Defaults

Our Microsoft 365 Hardening Baseline

Microsoft 365 is secure by default — but “by default” leaves a lot of decisions to the buyer. Here’s the configuration baseline we apply to every tenant. For the next level — DUO MFA, advanced email security, full Conditional Access — see our Pro-Active service tier.

  • MFA enforced for every user. Multi-factor authentication required on every account from day one. No exceptions, no “just for admins” — every user, every sign-in.

  • Baseline Conditional Access policies. Legacy authentication protocols blocked, sign-in risk evaluated, and unfamiliar-location prompts enabled. The foundation that defaults don’t give you.

  • Sensible sharing limits. By default M365 lets users share anything with anyone, including links that work for non-authenticated viewers. We configure shared-link expiry, external sharing restrictions, and guest access policies that match your business risk tolerance.

  • Retention and recovery policies. Email retention, OneDrive version history, recycle bin lifespans — all set to defensible defaults, not Microsoft’s accept-everything starting point. So when an employee leaves or a file gets deleted, there’s a meaningful window to recover.

  • Tenant health monitoring. When Microsoft has an outage or a security advisory affecting your tenant, we know about it before your team starts calling. Microsoft Service Health alerts translated into language your office manager can use.

  • License management baseline. Right-sized licensing at deployment, reviewed at every renewal. Most clients are over-paying when they come to us; most renewals lower the bill.

Want More?
Olympus Includes the Advanced Security Stack

DUO MFA, advanced email security (anti-phishing, anti-impersonation, link/attachment scanning), M365 cloud-to-cloud backup, and full Conditional Access policies — all included in our Pro-Active service tier. Available as standalone add-ons for Spartan clients who want individual upgrades.

See Pro-Active →

Migration Scope

What We Move into Your New Microsoft 365 Tenant

Migration scope is sized to your needs and budget. Some clients DIY parts of the move to reduce cost; others want us to handle everything. We tell you the trade-offs and let you decide.

Email & Calendars

From personal Gmail/Outlook accounts, web-host POP/IMAP mailboxes, on-prem Exchange, or Google Workspace — we migrate inboxes, calendars, contacts, and rules with minimum disruption to your team.

Files & Shares

Old file servers, network shares, scattered Dropbox/Google Drive folders — moved into OneDrive and SharePoint with permissions reorganized so the right people have the right access without re-sharing every document.

Teams & Channels

Whether you’re new to Teams or consolidating from Slack, we set up your Teams structure to match how your business actually communicates — not a generic template.

Archives, Shared Mailboxes & Distribution

Old PST archives, shared support@ inboxes, distribution lists, and group calendars — all migrated and reconfigured in the new tenant. Nothing left behind on the old system.

Ongoing Administration

What Microsoft 365 Service Covers Month-to-Month

  • User account lifecycle. New hires, terminations, role changes — handled the same day with the right license tier, the right group memberships, and the right access. When someone leaves, we close access cleanly and preserve their data per your retention policy.

  • License optimization. Adds, drops, and right-sizing — Business Basic vs Standard vs Premium, when an Intune license is worth it, when Frontline saves money for shift workers. Reviewed at every renewal so you’re not over-paying.

  • End-user troubleshooting. Outlook won’t sync, OneDrive selective sync broke, Teams audio is wrong, sensitivity label confusion, sharing an external doc with a vendor — the day-to-day questions that pile up when a team uses M365 at full strength.

  • Password resets & account recovery. Forgotten passwords, locked-out accounts, lost phones during MFA setup — handled by a real technician, not a self-serve form letter that tells the user to call IT.

  • Application install help. Office apps, Teams, OneDrive sync, mobile setup — walked through with the user the first time so it actually works.

  • Tenant-level monitoring. When Microsoft has an outage or a security advisory affecting your tenant, we know before your team starts calling. We translate Microsoft Service Health alerts into language your office manager can use.

Training & Enablement

Three Layers of M365 User Training

Honest version: we’re great at deploying and hardening Microsoft 365, but we’re not a full-time training company. Here’s the practical mix that works for our clients.

Onboarding Basics — Included

OneDrive sharing, SharePoint navigation, Teams meeting essentials, mobile app setup. The day-one stuff every new user needs to actually work. Included as part of every M365 engagement.

Self-Service Learning

NTS-curated guides and Microsoft Learn playlists — short references covering OneDrive sharing, Teams etiquette, SharePoint navigation, and the questions we hear most often. We hand clients our own onboarding materials in addition to pointing at Microsoft’s training library. Most users learn faster on-demand than in a scheduled session.

Custom Training Sessions

For practice-wide rollouts or new-feature training — Teams Phone, SharePoint redesign, OneDrive policy changes — we offer paid live training sessions tuned to your team’s workflow.

Questions We Hear All The Time

Microsoft 365 Services — FAQs

No — but most clients prefer it. As a Microsoft CSP Indirect Reseller, we can sell you Microsoft 365 licenses at standard Microsoft pricing and handle all the billing, renewals, and add/drop adjustments through our invoice. You get one bill instead of a separate Microsoft billing portal to manage. If you’d rather buy direct from Microsoft and have us only administer the tenant, that works too.

Yes. We’ve migrated from Gmail and Google Workspace into Microsoft 365 several times. Mail, calendars, contacts, and Drive files move cleanly. The transition usually takes one to three weekends depending on data volume and how many users we cut over at once.

Very common starting point for us. We migrate from whatever your team is using — personal Gmail addresses, GoDaddy email, IONOS, BlueHost, anywhere — into a proper Microsoft 365 tenant with your real domain. Most clients are surprised how affordable the move actually is once we structure the licensing right.

Microsoft Authenticator MFA is enabled for every user as part of our standard baseline. For clients who want a more robust second factor — DUO MFA, with a separate identity layer that isn’t bypassed by the same patterns hitting Authenticator push-bombing campaigns — that’s available as an upgrade and included in our Pro-Active service tier. Most clients who upgrade to DUO say their team adapts within a week and prefers the experience.

Yes. Microsoft retains your data per their retention policies, but those policies are not a backup — if data is deleted or corrupted past the retention window, it’s gone. We deploy a third-party cloud-to-cloud backup for Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams content. Included by default in our Pro-Active service tier; available as a paid add-on for Spartan/standalone M365 clients who want the coverage.

We configure Microsoft 365 tenants to meet the security expectations of healthcare, legal, and financial clients — encryption, MFA, retention, audit logging, and access controls aligned with HIPAA, NAIC, and similar frameworks. We are not auditors and do not issue compliance certifications. For practices that need a signed Business Associate Agreement with Microsoft and formal compliance documentation, we work with you to coordinate that process.

Most clients land on Microsoft 365 Business Premium because it includes the security and management features (Intune, Entra ID conditional access, Defender) that a real business needs. We’ll right-size the licensing during onboarding — Business Basic or Standard for some roles, Premium for users who handle sensitive data, Frontline for shift workers who don’t need a full desktop license. License review is part of every renewal.

Two pieces: the Microsoft license cost (whatever plan, billed monthly through us) and our administration/support service. Standalone M365 administration is a flat monthly fee per user. For Pro-Active service clients, M365 administration is included in the per-user managed services rate. We’re happy to quote your specific situation after a 15-minute conversation.

Discovery and planning: one week. Tenant setup and hardening: one to two weeks. Mailbox + file migration: typically one weekend per 25-50 users (faster with cleaner source data). User training and go-live: one week. So a full project for a 25-person office usually completes in four to six weeks from signed agreement to fully cut over.

Ready When You Are

Stop Fighting Microsoft 365.

Start Using It Properly.

Schedule a 15-minute consultation. Tell us where Microsoft 365 is fighting your team — whether that’s a stuck migration, a tenant that needs hardening, or licensing that’s grown beyond what makes sense. We’ll tell you honestly what’s worth doing and what isn’t.

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Reach Our Help Desk

844-959-5040

Northern Technology Services · Petoskey, MI · Microsoft CSP Indirect Reseller