For many institutions, “Microsoft” is not a vendor; it is oxygen. Identity, mail, collaboration, document management, endpoint management, even parts of core banking integration all flow through that ecosystem. Which is precisely why you should run the scenario nobody wants to think about: what if you had to exit, partially or fully?
The trigger does not have to be dramatic. It could be a regulatory development on third‑country transfers, a contractual dispute, a major incident that changes your risk appetite, or a strategic move toward more digital autonomy. Whatever the cause, an unplanned scramble away from Microsoft would quickly expose undocumented dependencies and brittle workarounds.
A serious continuity posture means you know which services are truly Microsoft‑dependent, what your exit SLAs look like, and how data can be exported and migrated at scale without losing integrity or creating new compliance issues. That requires a tested playbook, not just a line in a policy.
Have you identified and documented credible landing zones—commercial or open‑source. For your most critical Microsoft‑backed services? And has anyone actually rehearsed a constrained migration, or are you relying on hopeful assumptions and marketing slides?