Plenty of businesses still treat Microsoft 365 like a suite of apps with a helpdesk queue bolted on. It's a platform with its own operations lifecycle, and the mismatch between how it's treated and what it actually is explains most of the underinvestment we see.
Tier 1 — Users can do their jobs
Password resets, MFA, device enrolment, mailbox rules, Teams chat, OneDrive sync. Measured in ticket close time. It's 40% of the work and the hardest to do well at scale.
Tier 2 — The tenant is healthy
Exchange routing, SharePoint storage, Teams governance, Intune compliance, licence optimisation. Measured in baseline drift. If nobody's watching Tier 2, you'll notice when the auditor arrives.
Tier 3 — The platform is progressing
Purview, Copilot readiness, identity posture, conditional access, zero trust, backup strategy. Measured in capability delivered per quarter. This is the tier most MSPs don't provide — and where the business value lives.
What to ask your provider
- Who owns our Tier 3 roadmap — and when was it last reviewed?
- What's our current Essential Eight posture, and how is it trending?
- What percentage of our licences are unused? What have we reclaimed this year?
- Who's our escalation point to Microsoft if something critical breaks?
If the answers are soft, the contract isn't doing its job.