Independent advisory · Managed IT · Microsoft Cloud
Your IT department, minus the hiring.
We help you choose the big systems — ERP, payroll, field operations — read the contracts before you sign them, and run your IT day to day. Fixed fees, published prices, and no markup on a single license — because we're paid for the answer, not the sale.
Licensing, at Microsoft's price
We become your Cloud Solution Provider, so Microsoft 365, Copilot, and Azure all arrive on one bill. On a managed plan you pay list price. We add nothing.
Support your team will actually use
Unlimited helpdesk, new starters set up before day one, laptops managed, patches applied. Priced per person, not per ticket or per device.
Azure that stops surprising you
Migrations off aging servers, then day-to-day operation with a monthly report showing exactly what we cut and what it saved.
Advisory
Big system decisions, without a vendor's thumb on the scale.
The software you'll live with for a decade gets sold to you by people paid on commission. We sit on your side of the table: run the evaluation, verify the real pricing, read the contract line by line, and stay through go-live. On these engagements we take no vendor commissions — the fee below is the whole fee.
3–4 weeks · $6,500
Systems Selection Study
Requirements from the people who'll actually use it, a shortlist of real candidates, pricing verified with the vendors rather than taken from a list, a three-year cost model, and a written recommendation you can defend to your board.
Payroll, ERP, CRM, field-operations platforms.
1–2 weeks · $3,500
Contract & SOW Review
Every clause read, findings ranked by severity, the missing protections named — liability caps, IP ownership, exit rights — and starting redline language your attorney can work from instead of starting cold.
We're consultants, not a law firm — conclusions route to your counsel.
Monthly · $3,900
Implementation Oversight
Your side's project manager while a vendor implements: stage-gate review before each payment releases, integration decisions documented, scope creep challenged in writing, and a cutover plan that includes the rollback.
Typical program runs three to six months.
2–3 weeks · $4,800
Integration & Cutover Architecture
Current-state and target-state diagrams, every data flow named with an owner, sequencing across vendors, and a parallel-test design so go-live is a formality rather than a leap.
Standalone, or folded into an oversight retainer.
Recent work — details anonymized
What these deliverables actually look like.
For a multi-entity equipment company weighing three payroll platforms: a sixteen-page evaluation with vendor-confirmed pricing found a $58,000 difference in three-year cost between the finalists. The contract review that followed caught an implementation agreement that had expired before anyone signed it, omitted an entire workstream from scope, and carried no liability cap, no IP-ownership clause, and no exit provision — each finding severity-ranked, with proposed language, before a dollar was committed.
Pricing
Three plans. Pick the one that matches how much IT you already have.
Per person, per month, on a twelve-month agreement. Ten-person minimum. Microsoft license costs sit on the same invoice at list price — the estimator below adds them in so you can see the whole number.
You have someone technical in-house. You need the Microsoft side owned properly.
- Helpdesk, weekdays 6am–6pm PT
- Microsoft 365 and Entra administration
- Laptop management and monthly patching
- License buying, true-ups, renewals
- Annual roadmap and budget review
We are your IT department. Where most companies between 15 and 75 people land.
- Everything in Foundation, plus:
- A named founder on your account
- After-hours on-call for genuine emergencies
- New starters ready by next business day
- Backup for email, Teams, and files
- Email security and phishing training
- We handle your other vendors too
- Quarterly roadmap, one onsite visit
Compare all features, line by line
| Foundation | Operations | |
|---|---|---|
| Support | ||
| Helpdesk hours | 8×5 | 8×5 + on-call |
| Unlimited remote support | ✓ | ✓ |
| Named lead engineer | — | ✓ |
| New starter / leaver turnaround | 3 days | Next day |
| Onsite visits (California) | Hourly | 1 per quarter |
| Critical issue response | 4 business hrs | 1 business hr |
| Microsoft estate | ||
| License buying and true-ups | ✓ | ✓ |
| Microsoft 365 and Entra admin | ✓ | ✓ |
| Device management (Intune) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Patching and vulnerability fixes | Monthly | Weekly |
| License waste review | Annual | Quarterly |
| Security and continuity | ||
| MFA and access policies | ✓ | ✓ |
| Endpoint protection | Defender for Business | Defender P2 |
| Microsoft 365 backup | Add-on | ✓ |
| Email security and phishing sims | — | ✓ |
| Security monitoring | Alerts only | 90-day logs |
| Incident response hours | — | Add-on |
| Compliance evidence pack | — | Add-on |
| Advisory | ||
| Roadmap and budget review | Annual | Quarterly |
| Managing your other vendors | — | ✓ |
| Documentation you own | ✓ | ✓ |
Estimator
Work out what you'd pay, right now, without talking to anyone.
Move the sliders and the invoice on the right updates. Every number comes from the published rates on this page — nothing hidden, nothing "contact us for pricing."
Your monthly invoice
A senior systems administrator costs about $11,250 a month fully loaded — one person, one skill set, who takes vacations.
An estimate, not a quote. Real numbers come after a free 30-minute call.
What the estimator can't see
Old servers that should have been retired years ago. A line-of-business app nobody wants to touch. Two offices on different internet providers. That's what the free consultation is for — a half-hour call where we ask the awkward questions and adjust the number honestly, up or down.
Where the savings usually hide
- Licenses assigned to people who left months ago
- Premium plans on staff who only need email
- Two products doing the same job because nobody compared them
- Azure resources running nights and weekends for nobody
- An auto-renewal that fired before anyone looked at it
Our free audit finds these before you sign anything. You keep the report either way.
Licensing
You shouldn't pay a middleman a margin to press a button.
Microsoft pays cloud solution providers for helping customers actually use the platform — not for reselling seats. So we don't mark seats up. You pay Microsoft's price and we keep the partner economics. That's the entire arrangement, and it's in the contract.
On any managed plan
Microsoft list price. Zero markup.
- Add and remove seats monthly, wherever the license allows it
- Renewal calendar managed — nothing auto-renews quietly
- Quarterly hunt for unused, duplicated, and oversized licenses
- One invoice across Microsoft 365, Azure, and our services
- Your tenant stays yours — we're a guest with a key, not the landlord
Licensing only
List price plus 8%.
- For companies with in-house IT who just want the paperwork gone
- $250 per month minimum
- Same true-ups, renewals, and waste reviews as above
- Fee credited back in full if you move to a managed plan within a year
- Moving from another provider takes about fifteen minutes and no downtime
Current prices for the licenses we sell most
| Product | Best for | Microsoft list | You pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic | Email, Teams, web and mobile Office | $6.00 | $6.00 |
| Microsoft 365 Business Standard | Adds desktop Office apps | $12.50 | $12.50 |
| Microsoft 365 Business Premium | Adds device management and security — the usual answer | $22.00 | $22.00 |
| Microsoft 365 F3 | Frontline and shift workers | $8.00 | $8.00 |
| Microsoft 365 E3 | Over 300 people, or heavier compliance needs | $36.00 | $36.00 |
| Microsoft 365 E5 | Full security and analytics stack | $57.00 | $57.00 |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | AI across Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams | $30.00 | $30.00 |
| Entra ID P1 / P2 | Access policies / identity protection | $6.00 / $9.00 | $6.00 / $9.00 |
| Intune Plan 1 | Device management on its own | $8.00 | $8.00 |
| Defender for Business | Endpoint protection under 300 seats | $3.00 | $3.00 |
| Power BI Pro | Building and sharing reports | $14.00 | $14.00 |
US list, annual commitment, per person per month. Microsoft repriced its commercial cloud on 1 July 2026 — we confirm every figure against Microsoft's current price at the time we quote you, and pass through whatever it is on the day.
Azure
Pay Microsoft's rate for Azure. Pay us a fee that shrinks as you grow.
Your Azure consumption is billed through us at Microsoft's published rates with nothing added. Our management fee sits on top and steps down as your spend goes up. Most firms charge between 21% and 28% for the same work.
What the fee covers
- Automated platform monitoring, with alerts routed to a named engineer
- Every change made as code, in a repository you own
- Guardrails and tagging enforced so costs stay traceable
- Backup and disaster recovery, with a restore test you get to watch
- Reservations and savings plans managed on your behalf
- A monthly report: what changed, what it cost, what we cut
Our guarantee
If we don't save you more than we cost, we credit the difference.
Right-sizing, reservations, cleaning up forgotten resources, and shutting down test environments overnight typically takes 20–30% off an unmanaged Azure bill. So we'll put it in writing: measured against a baseline agreed before we touch anything, if verified savings across your first two full quarters don't exceed our fees for the same period, we credit you the shortfall.
Projects
Bigger pieces of work, quoted as a flat fee.
Fixed price after a short discovery call, and it holds unless you change the scope. You don't need a managed plan to hire us for any of these.
2 weeks · $2,500
Tenant Health & License Audit
What you're paying for, what you're using, and what's quietly at risk — written down, with a fix list in priority order.
Free for founding clients.
4–6 weeks · $12,500
Azure Landing Zone
The foundation everything else sits on: subscriptions, networking, policy, and cost controls, built as code and handed to you.
Server migrations after: $3,800 each.
4 weeks · $8,500
Copilot Readiness
Before you turn on AI: fix the files everyone can see but shouldn't, label what matters, pilot with a real team, then roll out.
Includes adoption training.
All fixed-fee projects and hourly rates
| Project | What you get | Time | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tenant Health & License Audit | Findings report, waste tally, prioritized fix list | 2 wks | $2,500 |
| Microsoft 365 Security Baseline | Hardening to CIS standards, documented exceptions | 3 wks | $6,500 |
| Backup & Disaster Recovery | Targets agreed, policies built, one witnessed restore test | 3 wks | $5,500 |
| File Server to SharePoint | Permissions remapped, staged move, training, up to 2 TB | 4 wks | $7,500 |
| Copilot Readiness | Oversharing cleanup, labels, pilot cohort, rollout plan | 4 wks | $8,500 |
| Entra ID Modernization | Single sign-on for your apps, access policies, passwordless | 4 wks | $9,500 |
| Azure Landing Zone | Subscriptions, policy, networking, infrastructure as code | 4–6 wks | $12,500 |
| Server Migration to Azure | Per server, after the landing zone. Minimum three. | — | $3,800 ea. |
| Virtual CIO Retainer | Advisory only: roadmap, budget, vendor negotiation | Monthly | $1,800 |
| Hourly | Rate |
|---|---|
| Principal architect | $265 |
| Senior engineer | $185 |
| Support engineer | $115 |
| Evenings, weekends, holidays | 1.5× |
| Emergency, no contract | $325 |
| Prepaid hours | Per hour | Price |
|---|---|---|
| 20 hours | $175 | $3,500 |
| 40 hours | $165 | $6,600 |
| 100 hours | $155 | $15,500 |
| 250 hours | $145 | $36,250 |
Blocks expire after twelve months, and unused hours roll into a renewal rather than disappearing. Billed in fifteen-minute increments against a ceiling you agree first.
Through 31 December 2026
Founding-client terms, for the first three companies.
We'd rather serve three companies exceptionally than a dozen adequately. Here's what we're trading for the reference and the case study.
- Free tenant audit — normally $2,500, and yours whether or not you sign
- No setup fee — normally $125 per person
- 20% off for six months — Operations drops to $111 per person
- Prices locked for two years — no annual increase, no mid-term surprises
- Leave any time on 60 days' notice — with everything handed back
Getting started takes about a month.
We look at everything
Audit your Microsoft tenant, inventory the equipment, reconcile the licenses. You get the findings report regardless of what you decide next.
We steady the ship
Device management rolled out, patches brought current, multi-factor authentication enforced, backups running and verified.
Support goes live
Your team gets the helpdesk details, documentation lands in your hands, and we walk through the first invoice line by line together.
First review
What broke and why, how the security posture moved, what you spent against baseline, and a twelve-month plan with costs attached.
Who you get
Gray Matter Group is two engineers. That's the point, not a caveat.
We're not a call centre with a tiered escalation path. There are two of us, we both came up doing this work, and the person who answers your ticket is the same person who negotiated your licensing and designed your network.
You never explain yourself twice
No level-one script, no handoff to someone who's never seen your environment. Both of us know your setup, because there are only two of us to know it.
Decisions happen in one conversation
You're talking to the people who own the company. Nothing needs approval from a regional manager, and nothing gets quoted by someone paid on commission.
We only take on what we can do well
Three founding clients, not thirty. If we're at capacity we'll tell you and recommend someone else, rather than sign you and stretch thin.
What being small honestly costs you
We don't staff a night shift, so we don't sell one. Support runs weekdays 6am to 6pm Pacific, and Operations clients reach one of us on-call after hours for genuine emergencies — a real person, usually within the hour, but not a contractual fifteen minutes at 3am. If your business truly needs someone awake around the clock, say so on the call and we'll tell you straight whether that's us. Usually it isn't, and we'll point you at a firm built for it.
Questions
The things people ask before signing.
What actually happens on the free consultation?
Do we have to move our Microsoft licensing to you?
We already have an IT person. Does this still make sense?
How fast do you respond when something breaks?
These are times to a real engineer working the problem, not an automated "we got your email" reply. You can escalate a ticket's severity yourself without arguing with anyone about it first. Targets apply during business hours; outside them, Operations clients reach a founder on-call for anything genuinely critical.
| Severity | Meaning | Foundation | Operations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Critical | Business stopped, or an active security incident | 4 bus. hrs | 1 bus. hr |
| Major | A whole team blocked, or badly degraded | 8 bus. hrs | 4 bus. hrs |
| Standard | One person blocked, but there's a workaround | 2 days | 1 day |
| Request | New account, access change, scheduled work | 5 days | 3 days |
Miss a critical target during business hours and we credit 5% of that month's fee automatically on your next invoice — you don't have to notice or ask. Credits cap at 15%. Business hours are 6am to 6pm Pacific, weekdays, excluding federal holidays.
Are we locked into a long contract?
Who owns our data and our Microsoft tenant?
What isn't included?
Do prices go up?
What size company do you work with?
Start here
Talk to an engineer for thirty minutes. No script, no follow-up sequence.
Tell us what's breaking and what you're paying now, and we'll tell you straight whether we can help. If it goes well, the next step is a free two-week audit — and the report is yours to keep either way, even if you hire someone else.