IT Consulting in Irvine, CA
For Irvine companies facing a decision or a project: a server reaching end of support, an acquisition to integrate, an office move in the Spectrum, a Copilot rollout or a compliance deadline. NetSys engineers assess, design and deliver the work remotely from Brooklyn, with fixed scopes, written roadmaps and costs you can budget against.
The short answer
NetSys provides IT consulting in Irvine, California: environment assessments, technology roadmaps with costs, Azure and Microsoft 365 migrations, server retirements, tenant consolidations after acquisitions, network and office-move designs, security and compliance programs, and virtual CIO reviews. Projects are delivered remotely from Brooklyn with milestones, acceptance checks and a handover; NetSys does not send consultants to Irvine. Meetings and change windows are set in Pacific time. Consulting work is quoted after scoping, and ongoing management, if you want it, is a separate month-to-month agreement.
Service information by The NetSys Group. Our editorial standards.
How IT consulting is delivered in Irvine
Every Irvine consulting engagement is remote, run by the engineers who will do the work rather than a sales team. Discovery starts with interviews over video and read-only access to your Microsoft 365 tenant, firewall and servers, plus a NinjaOne scan that inventories hardware, software and patch levels. We write findings in plain language, with a cost and a priority on each recommendation. Implementation happens in scheduled change windows, usually evenings or weekends Pacific time, with a rollback plan for each step. Where a project involves hardware, such as an office buildout, we specify and preconfigure the equipment and work with your cabling contractor, who installs it while we test from Brooklyn. Assessment, design and integration work is coordinated from Brooklyn, with meetings and change windows stated in Pacific time. The project has agreed milestones, acceptance checks and a handover. Ongoing monitoring and help desk require a separately defined managed scope.
Retiring Windows Server 2016 before January 12, 2027
Microsoft ends extended support for Windows Server 2016 on January 12, 2027, and Windows 10 already lost support on October 14, 2025. Many Irvine offices still have a 2016 server running file shares, a line-of-business database or a domain controller. The decision for each one is the same: move it to Microsoft 365 or Azure, rebuild it on a supported version, or isolate it with a dated plan to retire it. Our assessment lists every affected server and PC, what depends on it and the cost of each option. A typical migration moves files to SharePoint, identity to Entra ID and the application server to Azure or a new host, with a tested cutover weekend and a fallback if anything misbehaves.
Integrating acquisitions and consolidating Microsoft 365 tenants
Irvine's medical-device, software and lending companies often grow through acquisitions, and each deal leaves two of everything: two email domains, two Microsoft 365 tenants, two sets of laptops and two security stacks. Before closing, our IT due diligence reviews the target's environment for security gaps, licensing exposure and end-of-life systems, and prices the integration. After closing, we plan a tenant-to-tenant migration that moves mailboxes, OneDrive, Teams and SharePoint while keeping both domains working, then bring devices under one Intune policy set. Staff get a dated schedule and a single cutover weekend rather than months of half-migrated confusion, and the finance team gets one licensing bill.
Office moves in the Spectrum and the Business Complex
Companies trade space between the Irvine Spectrum, the Irvine Business Complex near John Wayne Airport and the research park by UC Irvine, and every move is an IT project with a fixed date. We start with circuits, which have the longest lead time, comparing options such as AT&T Business Fiber and Spectrum Business at the new address. Then we design the network, the conference rooms and Wi-Fi coverage from the floor plan, write the cabling specification for your contractor, and preconfigure firewalls, switches and access points. The old office's equipment is inventoried and either moved, sold or securely wiped. On move weekend we bring everything up remotely with the contractor and test phones, printers and meeting rooms before Monday.
Compliance programs with a deadline: CCPA audits, Safeguards and HIPAA
California's privacy agency finalized cybersecurity audit regulations under the CCPA that took effect on January 1, 2026. Businesses that meet the thresholds will need independent audits, with the first certifications due April 1, 2028 for those with more than $100 million in revenue, April 1, 2029 for $50 to $100 million, and April 1, 2030 for the rest. Irvine lenders already work under the FTC Safeguards Rule, and practices under HIPAA. A consulting engagement turns any of these into a project plan: a gap assessment against the rule's requirements, a prioritized remediation list with costs, written policies, and a calendar of the evidence each control should produce. This is general information, not legal advice.
IT Consulting in Irvine: what NetSys delivers
Know what you have
- Discovery across every server, cloud tenant, device, circuit and contract, written up in IT Glue so it stays current
- Risk register with the ten findings that matter most, each with a fix, an owner and a cost
Decide and build
- Cloud strategy with real numbers: keep, refresh or migrate, for each workload, with Azure and Microsoft 365 sized from your data
- Microsoft 365 architecture: Entra ID, Conditional Access, Intune, SharePoint information design and Exchange Online, in that order
Keep it honest
- Virtual CIO reviews each quarter, with a written roadmap, a budget and a list of what changed
- Vendor management for the decisions that involve a CRM, ERP, EHR or practice-management vendor
On-prem servers to Azure and OneDrive to SharePoint
Two migrations in one engagement. The client's servers lived in the office, so the business lived with the office's power, cooling and hardware age, and years of files sat in individual OneDrive accounts shared ad hoc. NetSys assessed and sized each workload and moved it into Azure with identity anchored in Entra ID, designed a SharePoint structure of sites by function and permissions by role before moving a single file, migrated the OneDrive estate into it, set backups for both platforms and took on day-to-day management. The write-up is limited to the scope delivered, with no outcome figures claimed.
IT consulting work for other clients
- Real estate
Commercial property management company
SharePoint migration of 800 GB of leases, vendor records, and property documents, with separate access permissions for 12 property teams.
SharePoint & OneDrive MigrationIT for Real Estate and Property Management
Client names are withheld. These examples were chosen for the work involved, not for where the client is, so none is presented as a Irvine client.
What IT consulting costs in Irvine
Consulting is priced by the project or by the review rather than by the hour: an assessment has a fixed price based on the size of the environment, a migration is quoted from the workload inventory, and virtual CIO advisory is a monthly figure that scales with how many reviews and decisions a year you need. What moves the number is the number of systems and sites, the compliance standard in play and whether we are also managing the environment afterwards. Every quote is written from discovery, and the terms run month to month.
Who this fits, and who it does not
Best fit: 10 to 150 employees, a decision on the table that involves cloud, an office move, an acquisition, a compliance program or a system nobody trusts, and leadership that wants options with numbers rather than a sales deck.
Read next
Industry pages: IT for Financial Services · IT for Healthcare
Terms used on this page: Virtual CIO (vCIO) · Microsoft Entra ID · Zero Trust
Guides: the cloud migration questions owners ask most · Google Workspace versus Microsoft 365 for a small business
Related pages
Read the full IT Consulting service page. See everything NetSys delivers in California.
Also in Irvine: Managed IT Services · IT Support · Cybersecurity
IT Consulting elsewhere: Los Angeles · San Diego · San Jose · Sacramento · Orange County · San Francisco
Related services: Azure Cloud Migration · Virtual CIO (vCIO) · Microsoft 365 Migration · IT Due Diligence Services
IT Consulting in Irvine: FAQs
How does IT consulting work for Irvine organizations?
It runs as a defined project. We agree the scope, deliverables and price in writing, then run discovery remotely: interviews, read-only access to your systems and an automated inventory. You receive a written report and roadmap within the agreed timeline, reviewed with you over video. If you approve implementation, each phase gets a change window in Pacific time, acceptance checks and a handover document. Help desk and monitoring are not part of a consulting project unless you add a managed agreement, which runs month to month.
How do I choose an IT consulting firm in Irvine?
Look for engineers who implement what they recommend, deliverables you can hold them to, and independence from any single product line. Ask for a sample assessment report, ask who will actually run the migration, and ask how they test before a cutover. A good consultant also tells you what not to buy. NetSys engineers hold degrees in electrical engineering, electronics engineering and computer science, along with Cisco and Microsoft certifications, and the engineer who writes your assessment is the one who runs the project.
How is IT consulting priced?
Each piece of work gets its own written quote after discovery. Assessments are fixed-fee and sized to the environment, migrations are priced from the count of mailboxes, terabytes, servers and applications to move, and ongoing virtual CIO reviews carry a monthly fee. Sites, systems and compliance standards are the main variables. Nothing starts before you approve the quote, so the invoice matches what you signed, and any change in scope is written up and priced before the extra work begins.
Can you help us adopt Microsoft Copilot or other AI tools safely?
Yes. Copilot sees whatever the user can see, so the first step is cleaning up permissions: overshared SharePoint sites, public Teams and old guest accounts. We run a readiness review, fix the access problems, set sensitivity labels and data loss prevention for client and patient data, then pilot with a small group and measure what it saves. For Irvine firms with regulated data, we document which tools are approved and what information may go into them, so staff do not paste client files into public chatbots.
Do we have to hire you to implement the roadmap?
No. The roadmap is yours, written so your staff or another provider can follow it. Many Irvine clients have us run the projects because we already know the environment, and some move to a managed agreement afterward, but neither is required. If you keep the work in house, a quarterly virtual CIO review keeps the plan, budget and risk list current and catches anything that slipped between reviews.
Bring the decision you are stuck on.
A cloud move, a merger, a compliance deadline, a system nobody trusts. Tell us what you run and what has to change, and an engineer comes back with an assessment, options with real numbers and the order to do them in.