Cloud & Modern Workplace
- Microsoft 365 design, tenant hardening, and governance
- Azure landing zones and workload migration
- Endpoint management (Intune, autopilot, patching)
- Legacy system and file-server migration
Services
Strategy, delivery, and the people behind both.
Two practices, run by the same principals: IT consulting and advisory, and IT staffing and workforce solutions.
Practice one
IT Consulting & Advisory
Every engagement runs through the same three phases. You can stop after any one of them and still own something useful.
Consult
Understand the estate and the constraints before proposing anything.
- Current-state infrastructure and application assessments
- Security and compliance gap analysis
- Cloud readiness and workload placement analysis
- Technology roadmaps and prioritization
- Budget modeling and business cases
- Vendor and platform evaluation
Deliverable: a prioritized, costed roadmap the client owns outright.
Design
Turn the roadmap into something buildable, schedulable, and budgetable.
- Target-state architecture
- Migration design and sequencing
- Security architecture and control design
- Implementation planning, staffing, and risk register
Deliverable: architecture and implementation plan detailed enough to execute or competitively bid.
Deliver
Execute the plan with senior practitioners and hand it over cleanly.
- Implementation and configuration
- Migration execution and integration
- Testing, validation, and cutover
- Documentation, enablement, and handover
Deliverable: a working, documented environment your team can run.
Focus domains
Three domains, deliberately.
We keep the scope narrow so the depth is real.
Infrastructure Modernization
- Network architecture, segmentation, and refresh
- Server and virtualization modernization
- Identity and access management
- Lifecycle, capacity, and resilience planning
Security & Compliance Baseline
- NIST CSF 2.0 and CIS Controls v8 assessments
- Prioritized remediation roadmaps
- Audit readiness and evidence preparation
- Cyber-insurance questionnaire readiness
vCIO & vCISO advisory retainers
Ongoing senior technology leadership for organizations that need the judgment without the full-time salary.
- Quarterly or monthly leadership cadence with your executive team
- Technology budget ownership and vendor management
- Security program oversight and board-level reporting
- Continuity between roadmap, delivery, and hiring decisions
Practice two
IT Staffing & Workforce Solutions
Technical hiring run by people who do the technical work — so screening is judgment, not keyword matching.
Contract staffing
Specialist capacity for projects, migrations, backfills, and peak load. Acorn holds the employment relationship, insurance, and payroll.
Contract-to-hire
Evaluate the fit in the actual environment before converting. Hourly rate during the contract period, then a reduced conversion fee.
Direct hire & permanent placement
Full-cycle sourcing, technical screening, and offer support for permanent roles, with a replacement guarantee.
Executive & fractional placement
Retained search for CIO, CTO, and CISO roles — or a fractional executive on a monthly basis when full-time is not yet warranted.
Roles we place
Where our bench is deep.
Sourced from the enterprise-trained talent pool across the St. Louis and St. Charles County corridor, and remotely nationwide.
Infrastructure
Systems, network, and virtualization engineers; administrators; site leads.
Cloud
Azure and Microsoft 365 engineers, cloud architects, DevOps and automation.
Security
Security analysts and engineers, GRC and compliance specialists.
Service desk
Tier 1–3 support, desktop and endpoint technicians, service leads.
Project management
IT project and program managers, business analysts, PMO support.
Data & applications
Data engineers and analysts, ERP and application specialists, integration developers.
Start with a scoping call.
Thirty minutes, no obligation. We will tell you plainly whether we are the right partner for the work — and if we are not, who is.