Cloud and Microsoft 365 Services in Central Texas
Engineer Austin designs, builds, migrates and secures Microsoft 365 tenants for small organizations and Texas public entities across Central Texas, with MFA enforced before the first user signs in. You keep the tenant, the domain, the Global Administrator credentials and a written copy of every setting.
A tenant built, migrated and secured
- Tenant design and build. Domain verified, SPF, DKIM and DMARC published, named mailboxes for staff and no-license shared mailboxes for addresses such as info@ and billing@.
- Staged migration. Mail and files move in stages, and the source stays untouched until every mailbox and folder is verified. Historical mail is an optional per-mailbox item.
- SharePoint and OneDrive structure built around how your office works: shared records in SharePoint, personal working files in OneDrive, so no record is trapped in a departing employee's account.
- Tools already in your license, put to work. Forms for public intake and registrations, Bookings for appointments and Planner for permit and compliance deadlines, configured on request.
- Staff off personal and free email. Anyone doing the organization's business from a personal or free account moves to a mailbox on your own domain, so correspondence stays with the organization.
- Known Folder Move and Files On-Demand, so Desktop and Documents are protected without changing how staff save. External sharing links expire and require verification; anonymous links are off.
- Identity security from day one. MFA enforced the moment an account is created, Conditional Access limiting full access to compliant Intune-managed devices, legacy authentication blocked. Password practice follows current NIST guidance: self-service reset, banned-password lists and no forced expiration.
- Mail protection. Defender for Office 365 anti-phishing and safe links, external-sender banners and mailbox audit logging, with a dedicated email filtering layer where needed.
- Licensing guidance in plain language. Business Basic, Standard and Premium mixed per user; Exchange Online Archiving; Intune options; Microsoft 365 Backup compared with third-party backup.
- Domains and DNS. One primary domain, variants registered defensively, every old address kept as an alias, and a .gov request prepared for governmental entities to file. We coordinate with your outgoing mail host, registrar and web designer under one short written authorization, so your website and email keep working while the domain moves into your name.
Assess, design, migrate, hand over
Assess
We inventory mailboxes, files, domains and licenses, and ask what must be retained and for how long. We check that every address on your letterhead, website and procurement documents is on a domain you own; mail sent to a look-alike domain is a quiet way to lose correspondence. For public entities we check whether criminal-justice or federal-grant data calls for a government-cloud tenant.
Design and quote
You receive a tenant design, a library structure and a written quotation listing each subscription and quantity. Nothing is ordered without your written approval.
Build and migrate
The tenant is built and the migration run remotely, typically two to three weeks from approval. Security policies are in place before the first user signs in, and your old system keeps running until the new one is verified.
Onboard and document
A remote onboarding session confirms MFA works for every user before it ends. The complete configuration is handed over in writing, and tenant administration continues under the Managed Service Program.
The tenant standard is re-baselined every year. Microsoft changes defaults, retires protocols and adds controls several times a year. We review our written tenant configuration annually against Microsoft's current security baseline, apply what matters to the tenants we manage with your approval, and tell you at the quarterly review what changed and why.
How AI speeds this up for you
AI assistants in our approval-gated tooling cross-check a built tenant against its written design and the approved licensing, flag any setting that drifted, and draft the configuration document you receive, so the hand-over is faster and more complete. A person reviews every line, no change is applied without approval, and no credential is ever pasted into a public AI tool. How we use AI.
Which license do you actually need?
We explain the tiers in plain language and mix them per user, so a board member with mail only does not carry the cost of a full desktop seat. Licenses are procured through our Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider relationship, billed monthly, and remain your property. Intune or archiving can be added later with written approval. You may buy direct instead, and we deploy the licenses at hourly rates.
The device matters too. Under Business Basic, Office editing works in the apps on phones and tablets with screens up to 10.9 inches, but only in the browser on a laptop. We match the license to the device each person actually uses, so nobody finds out at their first meeting.
| Tier | Typically fits |
|---|---|
| Business Basic | Web and mobile apps, mail, Teams and SharePoint for mailbox-only or light-use staff; app editing on screens up to 10.9 inches |
| Business Standard | Adds the desktop Office applications for staff who work in them daily |
| Business Premium | Adds Entra ID P1, Intune and Defender for organizations that need Conditional Access and device management |
Boards, governing bodies and public records
Accounts on your domain
Board and council members get accounts on the organization's own domain, so public business is retained under the Public Information Act rather than scattered across personal mailboxes.
A board workspace and orientation
A board distribution group, a shared library for meeting packets and a shared calendar. One remote orientation of about an hour covers signing in with MFA, reading packets and joining meetings, so the first meeting on the new system is not the first time members use it.
Personal phones, secured
Members read mail and documents on their own phones through the Outlook and OneDrive apps only. Older sync protocols are disabled and browser attachment downloads are blocked, with no device enrollment required. Full mobile device management is available when the organization owns the devices.
Devices the entity owns, if you want them
We compare a member's own phone, a tablet and a laptop side by side: security-update life, lost-device handling, management console and whether Office editing works under the board's license. Devices are configured, encrypted and enrolled at our office and shipped ready to use. Members can be mixed, decided member by member, and often the most economical answer is no new devices at all.
Records filed the way the office works
SharePoint is laid out by the work itself: permits, board packets and minutes, finance and audit, contracts and interlocal agreements. Permissions are set per library, and the board gets a read-only area for meeting materials.
Retention to your schedule
Retention policies follow the records schedule your body has adopted. Where none has been adopted yet, we apply the Texas State Library and Archives Commission local schedule for your type of entity and change it once yours is adopted. Litigation Hold and an expanded archive are available as options, configured at build time so a hold can be applied the same day a request arrives.
Every setting, in writing
- The complete Microsoft 365 security configuration, documented for your records.
- Domain and DNS records, including SPF, DKIM and DMARC, recorded as deployed.
- A written record of every subscription and quantity you approved.
- A SharePoint library map showing where each kind of record lives and who can reach it.
- An account and mailbox register, including shared mailboxes and aliases.
- The tenant, the domain and Global Administrator credentials, registered in your name.
- A staff walkthrough of the new structure before the old system is retired.
Designed before it is built
A tenant migration is a design problem before it is a technical one: which records belong to the organization, which policies apply to which people, and what happens the day a staff member leaves. We answer those questions in a basis of design before anything is built, so the tenant is designed on engineering principles under a licensed engineering firm rather than assembled from defaults.
Roughly fifty organizations run Microsoft 365 under our management, which is what makes it economical to set up a two-person office properly. Engineer Austin is Texas Registered Engineering Firm F‑15739; our team does the work to house standards set by our licensed Professional Engineer.
Platforms and who this is for
Platforms we build on: Microsoft 365, Exchange Online, SharePoint, OneDrive, Entra ID, Intune and Microsoft Defender, procured through our Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider relationship.
Who this is for: cities, counties and special districts with records-retention and Public Information Act duties; water and wastewater operators; medical practices and home-health agencies that need Business Associate Agreements; schools, churches and nonprofits; and legal, accounting, real-estate and consulting offices moving off an aging mail host.
Private cloud and hosted servers. A line-of-business application or records system you need to keep but not house can run on infrastructure we manage or on partner-hosted infrastructure, with backups, monitoring and documentation under the same program as the rest of your systems. Independent Microsoft 365 backup is covered under backup and disaster recovery; day-to-day administration under Managed IT Services.
We do not design AWS or Azure infrastructure. Where a workload needs more than Microsoft 365 offers, we say so and scope it separately.
Microsoft 365, answered plainly
Do we keep ownership of our Microsoft 365 tenant?
Yes. The tenant, the domain and the Global Administrator credentials are registered to your organization from the start and stay that way. Nothing we deploy locks your data or accounts to Engineer Austin. If you ever leave, data and administrative access are returned promptly on request.
Will our email be down during the migration?
No. The migration runs in stages while your current system keeps working. Mail and files are copied, checked mailbox by mailbox, and only then is mail routing switched. The old provider is left untouched until you confirm everything arrived, so there is always a way back if something is missing.
Which license do we need: Basic, Standard or Premium?
Usually a mix. Staff who work in Word, Excel and Outlook on a desktop need Standard or Premium. Board members and part-time users who only read mail are often fine on Basic. Premium adds Conditional Access, Intune and Defender, which we recommend for the people who handle sensitive records. We write the reasoning down per user.
Can our board members use their personal phones?
Yes, securely. Members use the Outlook and OneDrive apps on their own phones with an account on your domain. Older protocols that would copy mail into other apps are disabled, and attachment downloads through the browser are blocked. No one has to enroll a personal phone in device management to take part.
Do we need a .gov domain?
If you are a governmental entity, a .gov domain is worth having: it shows the public which messages are genuine. We prepare the request and a supporting letter documenting your entity's creation and recommend a name the registrar will accept; your senior official files it.
DIR reserves texas.gov names for state agencies, counties and cities, but special districts can get a free .gov through get.gov after a review of roughly two to four weeks. An interim domain in your entity's name keeps the email move on schedule meanwhile, existing addresses stay as aliases so nothing bounces, and legacy domains are transferred into the entity's own control.
Is Microsoft 365 backed up?
Only partly. Microsoft provides a two-stage recycle bin, version history on every library and a restore of any OneDrive or SharePoint site to any point in the last 30 days, which covers most accidental deletions. It does not cover a problem found months later, a long retention need, the mailbox of someone who has left, or an account that was compromised and emptied weeks ago. We recommend an independent daily backup with long retention; see backup and disaster recovery.
Start with a written assessment.
Tell us what you have and what is not working. Someone from our team, not a salesperson, replies within one business day by email or phone, and brings in our engineer when your request needs one. The assessment report is yours to keep whether or not you buy anything.