Cloud — New York / Tri-State
Microsoft 365 and Azure cloud services for New York businesses
Most Tri-State firms already run on Microsoft’s cloud. Stedholm administers it like production infrastructure: identity locked down, spending visible, data backed up independently, and every change documented.
Your tenant is production infrastructure. We treat it that way.
When email, files, chat, and identity all live in Microsoft 365, the tenant is not an accessory to your network — it is the network. Yet the most common finding in our assessments is a tenant configured once during migration and never revisited: admin accounts without hardware-backed MFA, sharing links open to anyone, licenses assigned by habit rather than need, and no independent copy of the data.
We run Microsoft 365 and Azure the way a good operations team runs a datacenter: a documented configuration baseline, change control, monitoring with engineer escalation, and quarterly reviews of cost and access. Administration and security are the same job here — the person adjusting your Conditional Access policy works from the same playbook as the security operations engineers watching your sign-in logs.
Cloud is one of the four things we run as a single discipline, alongside managed IT, cybersecurity, and infrastructure.
01 — Cloud services
Four ways we run your cloud
Each is a distinct service with its own scope. Most clients start with one and grow into the others as the roadmap dictates — not because a bundle forces it.
M365
Microsoft 365 administration
Entra ID, Intune, Defender, Exchange Online, and Teams/SharePoint governance — administered and hardened as one platform, not five portals.
Azure
Azure managed services
Landing zone design, cost control, Azure Virtual Desktop, and hybrid connectivity for the workloads that belong in Azure — and honest advice about the ones that don’t.
Backup
Microsoft 365 & SaaS backup
Native retention is not backup. Independent, immutable copies of Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams data — with restores we actually test.
Migration
Cloud migration
Email, file servers, tenants, and workloads moved with real discovery, staged cutovers, and a rollback path at every step.
Cloud security starts with identity, not antivirus
Most cloud compromises we see start with a valid account signing in, not with malware: a phished password, an MFA prompt approved on autopilot, a token stolen from a browser. The defenses that matter are identity defenses — phishing-resistant MFA, Conditional Access that blocks legacy protocols and untrusted devices, admin roles granted just-in-time instead of permanently.
We build those controls to be evidenced, because for many of our clients they are legal obligations: NYDFS Part 500’s November 2025 MFA changes reach broadly across who must use it, and the FTC Safeguards Rule expects access controls you can demonstrate. Our NYDFS practice covers what the certification actually requires.
Detection sits on top: sign-in and audit logs feed our monitoring, and managed detection and response handles what the alerts turn up.
Good fit if
You run Microsoft 365 Business Premium, E3, or E5
A regulator or insurer is asking about MFA and access controls
Your Azure bill grows and nobody can say why
Internal IT wants an escalation path, not a replacement — see co-managed IT
You suspect your tenant still runs on migration-day defaults
How we run a cloud environment
The same operating discipline applies whether we manage your tenant alone or the whole stack.
Documented baseline
Every tenant and subscription gets a written configuration standard, so a deviation is a finding rather than a mystery.
Change control
Configuration changes are ticketed, attributed, and reversible. No anonymous edits in admin portals.
Continuous monitoring
Tenant health, sign-in anomalies, and cost thresholds are watched around the clock by our tooling, with engineer escalation when something needs a human.
Quarterly cost and license review
Licensing is re-fit to actual usage each quarter — unused seats, wrong plan tiers, and orphaned Azure resources are the most common savings we find.
Independent backup
Cloud data is copied outside the tenant’s own control plane, immutably, and restores are tested — see Microsoft 365 backup.
Evidence-grade reporting
Reports are written to be handed to an auditor, an insurer, or a client security questionnaire without translation.
Common questions
We already pay Microsoft. Why do we need a provider on top?
Microsoft runs the service; nobody at Microsoft administers your tenant. The shared responsibility model leaves configuration, identity, access policy, licensing, and data protection to you. That is the work we take on.
Is our Microsoft 365 data backed up by Microsoft?
The service is resilient, but resilience is not backup. Retention windows lapse, deletions propagate, and an attacker with admin credentials can empty recycle bins too. We back up tenant data independently and immutably — the full argument is on the cloud backup page.
We have internal IT. Can they keep the parts they own?
Yes. Co-managed is a first-class model for us: your team keeps day-to-day administration where they are strong, and we add hardening, monitoring, escalation, and project depth. See co-managed IT.
We are not on Microsoft 365 yet. Can you move us?
That is a scoped project with discovery, a pilot, staged cutover, and a rollback plan — described in full on the cloud migration page.
What does cloud management cost?
For most clients it is part of a per-user managed IT agreement; standalone cloud engagements are priced by tenant size and scope. Either way the scope document says what is included and what is not before you sign.
Run your cloud like it’s production. Because it is.
An engineer will walk your tenant’s posture with you — identity, sharing, licensing, backup — and tell you plainly what is fine and what is not.