Build
Provider exits and takeovers
Someone else holds the keys. We secure what we can reach, write down what we find, rebuild what isn’t handed over and switch over around your deadlines, with the way back tested first.
A takeover starts with the keys, not the improvements.
Changing IT provider moves passwords, documentation, backups and often the systems themselves from one team to another. When the handover is friendly, that’s a planned date. When it isn’t, the keys arrive late, in pieces or not at all, and the shutdown date doesn’t move. Either way your people keep working on live projects through the change. So a provider exit with us is a project with a route of its own: what we can reach is secured first, what we find is written down, what isn’t handed over is rebuilt in an environment your firm owns, and the switch is timed around your deadlines, with the way back tested before anything is touched.
The route
Six stations, from first access to calm operation.
Every provider exit follows the same route as every Build project. What changes is how much of it has to be rebuilt, and how little time the old contract leaves for it.
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Kick-off, in writing
Scope, the dates the old contract fixes, the risks and who decides what, agreed in writing. On day one we check the line out of the old environment. And we read a laptop’s VPN settings, because they show where remote access really runs.
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Access and safeguard
The keys first: your domain, admin access to Microsoft 365 in your firm’s own hands, your licences, and backups of your own with a restore tested. The admin access, the tenant and the documentation belong to your firm; if you ever leave us, you leave with all of it. Nothing is touched before there’s a way back.
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Document and stabilise
Every server, account, connection and dependency written down as we find it, the handover documents included, page by page. Where servers sit in the old provider’s data centre, a full test recovery in an isolated copy of the network finds what the handover left out.
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Switchover, out of hours
The switch itself runs at night or at the weekend, timed around your projects: final backups, the restore in your own environment, the domain controller first. Your team hears in advance what changes on Monday and whom to ask.
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30-day hypercare
The first weeks show what no handover mentions: the shortcut one team relied on, the login kept in a drawer. Each request goes to the engineers who did the switch, and what they fix goes into the documentation.
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Into daily operations
The old provider’s software and access come off every device and system, with a written check that nobody keeps a way in. Then the environment is handed into Manage, owned by the same TechPilot, or to your own team, documented and monitored.
On record
In the project order and the handover documentation.
- The scope, the dates and the risks, agreed before the first access
- Every system, account and connection, as found and as it is now
- The test recovery and the final backups, each with its date
- The old provider’s access and software, removed line by line
- Who holds the admin access now: your firm, by name
All of it in your name and your tenant, so that whoever runs your IT next, us or someone else, never starts from nothing again.
What usually goes wrong in a takeover.
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Improving before securing
The new provider starts tidying up before the domain, the admin access and the backups are in the firm’s own hands. Then the old access is revoked, and the tidying stops with it.
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The machine only the handover knows
Remote access, a licence server or a sync runs on a machine that appears only in the handover documents, and it would be switched off with everything else. Reading the handover page by page finds it.
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The line nobody checked
Servers in a provider’s data centre come out over its line. Capped at 50 Mbit/s, and the shutdown date doesn’t wait.
Also under Build
- Microsoft 365 and Azure migrations Servers and VPNs in the office retired where they no longer earn their keep, service by service.
- Mergers and carve-outs One tenant or two, turned into the structure the deal needs by the legal date, nobody stopping work.
- CAD and BIM environments Workstations, project shares and licence servers built for working across sites, so models stay fast and in sync.
- Office moves and new sites Network, internet, phones and printing ready before the first desk is occupied, with a plan B for the line.
- Rollouts New laptops, software or phones rolled out in waves, a pilot group first, without a lost working day.
Questions we get
Our old provider has given notice and set a date. Is that enough time?
It depends on what sits where, and the order matters more than the weeks. In the case we show, the whole exit took three weeks, with nine days from receiving access to the old provider’s shutdown. Secure the keys and the backups first, then build, then switch. In a first call we work out what has to be ready by your date.
What if our Microsoft 365 licences run through the old provider?
Then they are one of the first things we look at: how and when they can move, and what lapses if they don’t. Licences that lapse can take mailboxes and data with them, so this is settled before the shutdown date, not after.
Will our people notice the switch?
The preparation runs in the background. The switch itself runs out of hours, agreed with you, and your team hears in advance what changes on Monday and whom to ask. In the case we show, all 50 people were working on Monday morning.
What happens to the old provider’s access afterwards?
It comes off: admin accounts, delegated access to your tenant, the sync between your directory and Microsoft 365, group policies and every agent on every laptop, each removal with its date. The written check goes into your handover documentation.
Start
Is your IT in someone else’s hands?
In a first call we go through what sits where today, which dates are already fixed, and what we’d secure first.
- No first level
- No surprises
- Pilot before you buy