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EPC Group.net Governed Microsoft AI, Data & Cloud — since 1997. Six Microsoft Solutions Partner designations. epcgroup.net

AI governance & vCAIO, Microsoft Copilot, Claude, Power BI, Fabric & Fabric IQ, SharePoint & Teams — AI that holds up in regulated industries. Founded in 1997, EPC Group’s Houston team is a leading Microsoft AI, cloud migration, and Power BI consulting practice. With 29+ years of experience and 11,000+ Microsoft implementations, we help organizations modernize collaboration, analytics, and security using Microsoft 365, Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, SharePoint, Copilot, Azure, and the Power Platform. Our AI consulting and vCAIO services span Copilot, OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and more. We specialize in tenant‑to‑tenant and M&A consolidations, Exchange and SharePoint emergency support, G‑Suite (Google Workspace) to Microsoft 365 migrations, and legacy file share cleanup, helping Houston‑area enterprises move off outdated systems into a secure, AI‑ready cloud environment.

Is your Microsoft 365 tenant ready for AI? EPC Group's TAR-8 standard scores eight surfaces from 0 to 3: identity, sensi...
10/16/2026

Is your Microsoft 365 tenant ready for AI? EPC Group's TAR-8 standard scores eight surfaces from 0 to 3: identity, sensitive data, content estate, Teams conversations, reports and dashboards, business applications and CRM, infrastructure and external models, and ownership and evidence.

The rule that matters most: any surface at 0 means the tenant isn't ready, whatever the total.

Read the standard: https://www.epcgroup.net/insights/microsoft-365-tenant-ai-readiness-8-surface-standard?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=tar-8-standard-2026-10&utm_content=company-image

Contact EPC Group today by emailing us at [email protected] or calling 888-381-9725.

8 surfaces. 24 points. Evidence for every score.A license report tells you who can use Copilot. EPC Group's TAR-8 standa...
10/16/2026

8 surfaces. 24 points. Evidence for every score.

A license report tells you who can use Copilot. EPC Group's TAR-8 standard asks what an AI system can reach once it's connected to your Microsoft 365 tenant.

Swipe through the eight surfaces. Each is scored 0 (unknown), 1 (inventoried), 2 (controlled) or 3 (evidenced). Any surface at 0 means the tenant isn't ready.

The full standard: link in bio. Contact EPC Group today by emailing us at [email protected] or calling 888-381-9725.

What happens when an AI model’s confidence score becomes permission to change a customer record or approve a transaction...
10/14/2026

What happens when an AI model’s confidence score becomes permission to change a customer record or approve a transaction?

Microsoft-Decision-1 makes that a practical question for enterprise leaders.

The model scores defined choices. Your application determines what happens next, and your organization remains responsible for the outcome.

EPC Group’s latest article examines what Microsoft got right, what still needs evaluation, and the controls required across SharePoint, OneDrive, Purview, Power BI, CRM, and Azure.

We cover the questions every deployment team should answer:

• What information can the integration access?
• Who approved its decision thresholds?
• Which actions require human review?
• What happens when the model is uncertain or unavailable?
• Can the organization reconstruct a disputed action?

We also address Microsoft’s own guidance on meaningful human review for consequential decisions involving people.

If your organization is building AI agents, start by reviewing what those agents can read and change.

View the article here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/microsoft-decision-1-ai-decisions-your-company-has-own-errin-o-connor-ogdyc

Email EPC Group at [email protected] or give us a call at 888.381.9725
Multiple models. One truth.

G2’s TechBlend now features TAR-8 — the standard we wrote because almost every AI program I have been called into was fa...
10/09/2026

G2’s TechBlend now features TAR-8 — the standard we wrote because almost every AI program I have been called into was failing on the tenant, not the model.

The Model: https://www.g2.com/techblend/article/90621/read

To state that again, almost every AI program we have tested or worked to implement has been at some point, failing on the tenant, not the model.

EPC Group's TAR-8 scores the eight Microsoft 365 surfaces an AI deployment depends on, each 0 to 3, each with evidence attached: identity · data · content · Teams · Power BI · CRM · SharePoint · OneDrive · Azure · ownership.

Zero is no owner, no policy, no log. Three is an owner, a policy, a log, and we can show you.

We read the same eight numbers before a Copilot rollout, before a tenant-to-tenant migration, before a Power BI or Fabric capacity commitment, before a Copilot Studio agent touches Dataverse, and in every vCAIO board pack.

One score, one language, from the first assessment to the board. And it is not a Copilot-only standard.

It covers Copilot Studio agents, Fabric, and other AI models such as:

- Claude
- ChatGPT
- Gemini
- Perplexity
- Grok

And when they reach your tenant through a governed, logged integration layer, it gets very real very quick. If you run more than one model, you need one readiness score, not one per vendor. The standard is published in full. Score your own tenant before you talk to anyone, including us.

The link to EPC Group's TAR-8 standard for Microsoft 365 and AI can be accessed here:
https://www.epcgroup.net/insights/microsoft-365-tenant-ai-readiness-8-surface-standard

10/08/2026

Microsoft Fabric reached general availability in GCC High on October 1, 2026, while the CMMC Phase 2 transition remains suspended. NIST SP 800-171 still applies.

Our nine-point checklist helps defense contractors answer the hard questions in writing before the first Fabric capacity is provisioned: workload availability, assessment scope, identity, Microsoft Purview labels, audit logging, capacity posture, agents, first-workload sequencing and the commercial-cloud exit.

Read the checklist: https://www.epcgroup.net/news/microsoft-fabric-gcc-high-ga-data-foundation-checklist-cmmc-pause?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=fabric-gcc-high-cmmc-checklist-2026-10&utm_content=company-video

Microsoft Fabric reached general availability in GCC High on October 1, 2026. The Department of War suspended the Novemb...
10/03/2026

Microsoft Fabric reached general availability in GCC High on October 1, 2026. The Department of War suspended the November 2026 transition to CMMC Phase 2 in July and has not restored a start date.

For defense contractors, that is a planning window, not a reprieve. NIST SP 800-171 still applies.

EPC Group has published a nine-point data-foundation checklist: nine questions to answer in writing before the first Fabric capacity is provisioned — availability, scope, identity, labels, logging, capacity, agents, first workload and commercial-cloud exit. It incorporates TAR-8, our open 8-Surface Tenant AI Readiness Standard for Microsoft 365 and Azure.

The release is running on WGN-TV's news site in Chicago, and Bing's AI summary now describes the checklist and TAR-8 together.

Read the checklist: https://www.epcgroup.net/news/microsoft-fabric-gcc-high-ga-data-foundation-checklist-cmmc-pause

Is your Microsoft 365 tenant even AI-ready?This week EPC Group published TAR-8 — the 8-Surface Tenant AI Readiness Stand...
09/24/2026

Is your Microsoft 365 tenant even AI-ready?

This week EPC Group published TAR-8 — the 8-Surface Tenant AI Readiness Standard for Microsoft 365 and Azure — with coverage now on AP News.

A license report tells you who can use Copilot. TAR-8 tells you whether your tenant is actually ready: what an AI system can find, return, change, retain, or transmit once it's connected to your data.

The open standard scores 8 connected surfaces — Identity, Sensitive Data, Content, Conversations, Reports, Business Apps, Infrastructure, and Ownership — from 0–3, with operational evidence required for every score. It applies to Microsoft Copilot, AI agents, and governed external AI models.

Complete rubric + free interactive self-assessment:
https://www.epcgroup.net/insights/microsoft-365-tenant-ai-readiness-8-surface-standard

09/17/2026

EPC Group has been named a Leader in G2's Fall 2026 reports in the Business Intelligence (BI) Consulting category, marking the firm's seventh consecutive quarter of G2 Leader recognition in that category. G2 also awarded EPC Group its Momentum Leader badge for Fall 2026.

Key facts

EPC Group is a Houston, Texas, Microsoft consulting firm founded on March 30, 1997, and now in its 30th year. G2 Leader status in the Business Intelligence Consulting category is calculated from verified customer reviews and market presence data; it cannot be applied for and cannot be purchased. EPC Group holds a 4.4/5 rating on verified G2 reviews. The firm's Fall 2025 recognition included G2 Leader placement in three categories. Since 1997, EPC Group has delivered 11,000+ enterprise engagements, including 6,500+ SharePoint implementations, 1,500+ Power BI deployments, 500+ Microsoft Fabric implementations, and 216+ M&A tenant migrations covering 1.83 million users. Its founder, Errin O'Connor, is the author of four Microsoft Press and Sams Publishing books on SharePoint and Power BI, a former NASA Lead Architect, and an original beta team member for both SharePoint (Project Tahoe, 2001) and Power BI (Project Crescent, 2014).

"Seven consecutive quarters is a pattern, not a moment — and our clients set it, one verified review at a time," said Errin O'Connor, Founder & Chief AI Architect of EPC Group. "The programs behind those reviews are the ones where governance can't be an afterthought: healthcare analytics, financial-services reporting, and public-sector modern work built on Power BI and Microsoft Fabric. In our 30th year, consistency is the recognition we value most."

What G2 Leader status measures

G2 is a peer-review marketplace for business software and services. Its quarterly Grid reports place vendors and consulting firms on two axes: satisfaction, derived from verified customer reviews, and market presence, derived from data G2 gathers independently. Leader placement requires high scores on both. Because the inputs are reviews written by verified users and data G2 collects on its own, a consulting firm cannot buy a Leader position and cannot apply for one; it can only earn the placement quarter by quarter. EPC Group has held Leader placement in Business Intelligence Consulting in seven consecutive quarterly G2 reports, most recently Fall 2026. The Momentum Leader badge, added for Fall 2026, reflects growth in review activity and presence relative to the category over the trailing year.

Why does a streak matter more than a single placement? One quarter on a G2 grid reflects one review cycle. Seven consecutive quarters means the same delivery standard held through seven straight review cycles, across different clients, industries, and project types — and that clients kept describing the outcome in the same terms.

The work behind the reviews: Power BI at enterprise scale

Power BI consulting is the practice most directly measured by G2's Business Intelligence Consulting category, and it is the one EPC Group has run the longest. The firm was an original member of the Power BI beta team when the product was still Project Crescent in 2014, and it has since delivered 1,500+ Power BI deployments. Engagements cover semantic model and star-schema design, DAX optimization and performance tuning, row-level and object-level security, deployment pipelines and workspace governance, certified and promoted datasets, paginated reporting, Copilot in Power BI enablement, and the tenant settings, capacity management, and adoption programs that keep a Power BI estate governed after go-live. EPC Group also offers the AI-Ready Data Model Assessment, a fixed-scope review of an organization's Power BI semantic models for the structure, lineage, and certification that Copilot and other AI features depend on. Errin O'Connor's Microsoft Power BI Dashboards Step by Step (Microsoft Press, 2018) is part of Microsoft Press's Step by Step series.

Related services:

https://www.epcgroup.net/services/power-bi-consulting

https://www.epcgroup.net/services/power-bi-training

https://www.epcgroup.net/services/managed-microsoft-services

Microsoft Fabric and the lakehouse

EPC Group has delivered 500+ Microsoft Fabric implementations. Fabric consulting engagements include Fabric architecture and capacity planning, OneLake and lakehouse design on the medallion pattern, Data Factory pipelines and Dataflows Gen2, migration from Azure Synapse Analytics and legacy SQL Server data warehouses,

Microsoft just changed the strategic value of every Power BI semantic model your organization owns.With Microsoft Fabric...
07/28/2026

Microsoft just changed the strategic value of every Power BI semantic model your organization owns.

With Microsoft Fabric IQ, semantic models are no longer only powering dashboards.

They are becoming the trusted grounding layer for answers produced by Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, Copilot Cowork, Fabric Data Agents, and future AI-powered applications.

That means the measures, KPI definitions, row-level security, sensitivity labels, business terminology, and lineage your teams have built now determine whether enterprise AI answers are trustworthy—or merely convincing.

The central issue with enterprise AI is not whether it can produce an answer.

It is whether the answer is grounded in the right metric, the right definition, the right data, and the right security context.

https://linkedin.com/pulse/microsoft-just-told-you-every-power-bi-semantic-model-have-p3u6e/

In this article, I explain:

• What Microsoft Fabric IQ actually is
• What is changing with Copilot in Power BI
• Why Power BI semantic models are becoming the enterprise AI trust layer
• Why many organizations are not yet ready
• How to certify semantic models for AI grounding
• A practical 90-day Fabric IQ readiness plan

The organizations that spent years governing their semantic layer just discovered that they were not only building business intelligence.

They were building the foundation for trusted enterprise AI.

Is your Power BI semantic layer ready to ground every AI answer your organization produces?

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