Reference

Glossary.

Canonical definitions for the terms running through our work: the Managed Intelligence Provider category, the Centered AI Practice ladder, the CompleteCare seven-tier architecture, the Frontier Firm operating posture, and the named engagements and structural guarantees underneath.

01 · Category and operating model

The category we operate in, and the architecture underneath it.

Managed Intelligence Provider (MIP)

The operating model that replaces the Managed Services Provider. Named in late 2025 by the MSP industry analysts at Pax8 and Inforcer, an MIP delivers managed intelligence as a primary deliverable, runs a productized engagement model with Assess, Deploy, and Operate as a defined sequence, holds deep alignment with one AI platform while staying loyal to client outcomes, accumulates vertical-specific sector knowledge as a moat, and publishes structural guarantees with named remedies. The category is structural, not aspirational: a buyer can read a website, an SOW, and a price sheet and tell which side of the line a firm sits on.

Centered AI Practice

Centered Networks' productized four-stage engagement ladder for moving a mission-driven organization from informal ChatGPT use to governed Managed AgentOps on Microsoft 365. The four stages are AI Quickstart, Agent Launchpad, Frontier Transformation, and Managed AgentOps. Each stage carries a fixed fee, a fixed duration, and a named structural guarantee. The Practice runs on top of CompleteCare Foundations as its identity, device, and email baseline.

CompleteCare

Centered Networks' managed-services brand and the seven-tier architecture the Centered AI Practice runs on. The seven stackable tiers in canonical order are Foundations, Govern, Automate, Insight, Construct, Intelligence, and Shield. Foundations is the universal starting point: the Microsoft 365 Business Premium baseline anchored to the CIS Top 18 IG1 cybersecurity standard. Clients add upper tiers as their maturity, regulatory exposure, and strategic priorities evolve. One master agreement covers the whole relationship, month-to-month from day one.

Frontier Firm

The operating posture a fully-deployed organization reaches when humans set direction and agents run entire business processes end-to-end. The term comes from Microsoft's Work Trend Index 2025: The Year the Frontier Firm Is Born, which describes a three-pattern progression from human-with-assistant work, through human-led agents as digital colleagues, to humans setting direction while multi-agent workflows execute. The Centered AI Practice ladder is calibrated to this progression, with Stage 3 Frontier Transformation as the engagement that lands an organization at the Pattern 3 destination.

The named offerings. Fixed price, fixed duration, fixed deliverable.

Discovery Sprint

Centered Networks' two-week paid diagnostic for nonprofits, foundations, and rural hospitals. Combines interviews, tenant review, prioritized use-case scoring, and a governance readiness assessment to produce four written deliverables, including a 90-day implementation roadmap with measurable KPIs. The Discovery Sprint is the diagnostic front door; the roadmap is the client's to keep whether the engagement continues or not.

AI Quickstart

Stage 1 of the Centered AI Practice. A two-week, $5,000 to $15,000 paid diagnostic that produces a board-ready AI plan in 14 days: a shadow AI exposure audit, a Microsoft 365 Copilot readiness diagnostic, 5-Driver AI Readiness scoring, and a 90-day adoption roadmap with named stage gates and KPIs. Positioned as the partner-delivered version of Microsoft's Copilot and Power Accelerate Envisioning and PoC program, with Microsoft funding typically offsetting $2,000 to $5,000. Carries the 14-Day Diagnostic Promise: if the deliverable does not land by Day 14, the client pays nothing.

Agent Launchpad

Stage 2 of the Centered AI Practice. A fixed-fee engagement that takes an organization from a Microsoft 365 Copilot license to a first production Copilot Studio agent in four to six weeks. Includes Copilot deployed into production, the first agent built from one of the six Centered Networks Agent Kits, and a governance baseline (Agent 365 registry, Entra Agent ID, content safety policies) in place. Priced at $25,000 to $50,000, with Microsoft funding through Copilot and Power Envisioning and Deployment Accelerator typically offsetting $15,000 to $50,000. Carries the 6-Week Production Promise, the First-Agent-Live Promise, and the Open Repo Promise.

Frontier Transformation

Stage 3 of the Centered AI Practice. A 90-day fixed-fee engagement that deploys the full Microsoft Frontier stack: Microsoft 365 E7 across the licensed user base, Microsoft Agent 365 control plane configured against Observe, Govern, and Secure, three or more production agents using multi-agent orchestration, identity perimeter modernized on the Entra Suite, and an AI Center of Excellence with governance rituals and a quarterly Responsible AI review. Priced at $75,000 to $150,000, with Microsoft Copilot Accelerate ECIF typically offsetting approximately $47,000.

Managed AgentOps

Stage 4 of the Centered AI Practice and the steady-state Managed Intelligence Provider relationship. A recurring, month-to-month operations discipline that runs every production agent against ten named workstreams: performance monitoring, prompt library curation, model lifecycle management, governance evolution review, shadow AI scan, FinOps for AI, KPI dashboard, Monthly Value Brief, Quarterly AI ROI and Risk Review, and new use-case development. Priced at $500 to $1,500 per agent per month plus 15% PEC on Copilot Studio consumption. Carries the No-Shadow-AI-Drift Promise.

Frontier Briefing

A private 90-minute, no-charge board-level session for nonprofit, foundation, and rural-hospital leadership. Translates Microsoft's Frontier Firm direction (Copilot, agents, digital labour, and the maturity model behind it) into language a board can act on. No technical jargon, no sales pitch. Used by boards as the vocabulary-alignment step before approving a Discovery Sprint or an AI Quickstart.

Healthcare AI Readiness Assessment

A two-week, $7,500 HIPAA-aligned AI readiness assessment for rural hospitals, critical-access hospitals, FQHCs, and community healthcare systems. Audits AI governance against HIPAA technical and administrative safeguards, scores clinical and operational use cases for clinical risk, includes a BAA gap analysis, and produces a 90-day roadmap written in the format compliance committees and surveyors expect. For eligible hospitals, the engagement aligns to the Microsoft Rural Hospital Resiliency Program.

Rural Resiliency Readiness

A two-week, $5,000 fixed-fee productized engagement that takes a rural or critical-access hospital from initial consideration of the Microsoft Rural Hospital Resiliency Program to fully enrolled and operational. Includes eligibility verification and registration, license placement, Windows 10 ESU enrollment, a benefits utilization map across all nine Resiliency Program offerings, and a 90-day operational roadmap into CompleteCare Foundations and Shield.

M365 InstantOn

A productized way to bring real operating discipline to a Microsoft 365 tenant: a CIS-certified security baseline deployed across identity, devices, email, collaboration, and data protection in 14 calendar days, then continuously managed with daily drift detection, monthly uplift releases, and a Quarterly Roadmap Review. Standard track is $10,000 Launch plus $1,000 per month Managed, for nonprofits with 50 to 500 staff. The Critical Access Hospital Edition is $15,000 Launch plus $2,500 per month Managed, and carries the Bedside-Safe Migration Method, BAA-before-kickoff, HHS 405(d) alignment, and the Joint Commission Email Posture Memo as standard deliverables. The 14-Day Launch Promise, Continuity Promise, and Portability Promise all apply.

The conditions we operate against, and the structural promises we make.

Shadow AI

Unsanctioned, ungoverned use of AI tools by staff inside an organization: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other consumer-grade or personal-tier AI services used on work data without IT's knowledge or governance posture attached. Shadow AI is not a future risk for mission-driven organizations; it is a present condition, with donor records, grant material, board minutes, client documentation, and, in healthcare contexts, PHI moving into models the organization does not control. The question is not whether shadow AI is happening, but whether the AI happening inside the organization is governed or ungoverned.

Portability Promise

A structural guarantee on M365 InstantOn that nothing about the client's baseline is locked inside a proprietary box. On request, at any time, Centered Networks delivers a portable export of the baseline configuration, every runbook in Markdown that the client owns forever, the full change history, and a documented offboarding path including rollback artifacts and an offboarding walkthrough. No offboarding fee, no data hostage. The artifacts are not proprietary scripts in a language no one else uses; any competent Microsoft Partner can read and continue from them.

Continuity Promise

A structural guarantee on M365 InstantOn covering operational continuity in the first 12 months of Managed. Continuous drift detection runs every day across identity, devices, email, sharing, and data policies; drift events surface as tickets in the service desk with a named owner inside 24 hours, not as findings in a dashboard nobody opens. Approved rollback to last-known-good completes within 4 business hours, often inside one. On the Critical Access Hospital Edition the Continuity Promise carries a clinical scope: a six-month engagement extension at no charge if a clinically-significant outage is traceable to Centered Networks configuration.

Centered Agents

The catalog of six pre-built Copilot Studio agents Centered Networks delivers as productized Agent Kits for mission-driven workflows: Donor Intelligence (drafts donor outreach and major-gift prep grounded in the CRM), Intake and Routing (classifies and routes incoming forms and emails), Knowledge Keeper (answers staff questions grounded in policies and program documentation), Research Assistant (drafts grant prospect profiles and program literature synthesis), Constituent Support (handles routine constituent and patient-services questions, escalates the rest), and Board Reporter (synthesizes program data into board-ready reports). Each kit ships with a working prototype, configurable workflows, governance posture, and measurement framework, and is delivered governed, in production, in 4 to 6 weeks.