When a deal closes, the integration clock starts. Our M&A migration engineers consolidate identities, mailboxes, files, and security controls across tenants so the combined organization runs as one. We name the failure points before cutover, not after.
2M+
Identities migrated and consolidated
5M+
Mailboxes
500M+
Files, folders, and permissions
A cross-tenant migration is where integration risk concentrates. Identity conflicts, data silos, and licensing mismatches surface at the same time, and each one delays the integration the deal depends on.
Three things have to be true before the combined organization can operate:
One Identity, Not Two
One identity per person across formerly separate tenants: Entra ID, on-premises Active Directory, Google.
No Gap in Access
Mailboxes, files, apps, and security controls moved without a gap in access.
Compliant at Cutover
A compliance posture that holds at cutover, not one you retrofit later. CMMC, ITAR, FedRAMP High.
If you handle CUI or sensitive IP across entities, the compliance posture has to be correct the day the tenants merge, not reconstructed afterward. We build the controls into the migration and document them as we go.
Frameworks we align to:
Whether you support the Department of War or manage sensitive IP across newly combined entities, we identify the controls that apply, implement them during the migration, and hand you the documentation an assessor will ask for.
STEP 1 0F 5
Identity Strategy and Licensing Alignment
STEP 2 0F 5
Tenant Deployment and Configuration
STEP 3 0F 5
Email, File, and App Migration
STEP 4 0F 5
Security Posture Design
STEP 0F 5
Change Management and Productivity Enablement
Consolidating tenants is the start. Once mail and files land, the combined environment still carries duplicate SaaS, uneven security, and governance that predates the deal.
The integration clock is already running. Where does your tenant consolidation sit on it?
Microsoft does not let you move a license from one tenant to another. Your Commercial licenses stay in the Commercial tenant, and the new GCC or GCC High environment gets its own licensing, sized for what you actually need there.
Your current Commercial licensing runs until the end of its term. It doesn’t cancel or transfer just because a new environment exists.
The two environments don’t merge into one. You can run users in both Commercial and GCC or GCC High at the same time, but those stay two separate accounts with separate logins, not a single combined identity.
Yes. Moving from Commercial or GCC to GCC or GCC High involves a cutover window, and users lose access to their account and services like email and SharePoint for a few hours while it runs. That window is planned, not incidental.
Mail moves into a sandbox during cutover, so emails sent or received in that window get retained, not lost. Once validation is complete, access is restored and the sandbox reconciles with the target tenant.
Desktop applications take longer to catch up. Users may not have access to desktop apps like Outlook or Word for a few days after the migration, even once account and web access are already restored.
The management of user identities can be handled a number of ways within the GCC and GCCH tenants. One option is to have all the identities be managed by Entra ID in the tenant. If customers are migrating off a Google Workspace, or are migrating their entire Commercial domain to GCC/GCCH, then leveraging Entra ID for all identities is the best option. If the customer has a use case where they need to retain a local Active Directory, there are a number of technical solutions we can deploy to have the local Active Directory and Entra ID work in unison to manage user identities. A technical discovery would be needed to determine the best solution for a customer.
A GCC tenant, properly configured with the appropriate security measures in place can hold FCI per FAR 52.204-21 and CUI data per CMMC requirements detailed in NIST 800-171. Organizations working with ITAR, EAR, or documents marked NOFORN must use the GCCH environment. In practical application, we recommend all customers working with CUI leverage the GCCH environment because receiving a document marked NOFORN on a GCC tenant would put the organization out of compliance and may be a reportable incident. In our quoting process, we help identify which compliance frameworks actually apply to your business and help select the appropriate environment, rather than building against all of them by default.
Before. The compliance posture has to be correct the day the tenants merge, not reconstructed afterward. We build the controls into the migration itself and document them as we go, so the documentation an assessor will ask for already exists at cutover.
Both are covered, but not under the same agreement. Security Posture Design is one of the five steps in the migration framework: Zero Trust-aligned policies, alignment to whichever frameworks govern the environment, and hardening before and after cutover, not just during the move itself. That’s included in the migration engagement.
Hardening and support beyond the migration itself run under a separate MSP agreement.
It depends on the number of identities, mailboxes, and applications involved—but the biggest driver of the duration will be the amount of data that needs to be transferred between the tenants. The movement of the domain and the migration of identities can be done very quickly. The removal of devices from the old tenant and associating them with the new tenant can be time consuming and very large data transfers can take days to weeks, or longer. . A detailed scope review of what needs to be migrated is what turns that into an actual timeline for your specific environment, rather than a generic estimate that doesn’t hold up.
You come in with what you know about your environment. We bring the experience to make sense of it.
If compliance shapes your organization, it should shape your IT. The boundary is a decision you can still make on your own terms, or one an assessment date makes for you. Which of those are you working on this quarter?
