IT & Microsoft cloud for accountancy
Hosted desktops, practice software, client data security and January-peak capacity for accountancy practices.
Checked 4 October 2026. Built from the full sector page.
In short: Practice software that holds up in January, client data you can evidence, and licensing that survives growth by acquisition. Decide the self assessment peak question first, because it is the constraint the rest of the estate has to serve, and it is cheaper to design for in the summer than to survive in January.
What changes in this sector
Accountancy is one of the few sectors where demand is genuinely, predictably spiky. Self assessment in January, corporation tax and year ends clustered elsewhere, and a run-up where the same team works far longer hours on the same systems. That shape punishes infrastructure sized for the average and rewards infrastructure that can flex, which is exactly the opposite of how most practices have historically bought IT.
What we would do
Decide the January question before you decide anything else. If your practice software strains at the self assessment peak, that is the constraint the rest of the estate has to serve, and it is cheaper to design for it in the summer than to survive it in January.
- If the practice is growing by acquisition, standardise the tenant and the device build first. Merging estates later costs multiples of doing it once.
- If IRIS, CCH, Sage or TaxCalc are the concern, test them on a real build with real data before committing to any desktop strategy. Vendor support statements are not the same as a working test.
When we are not the answer: If your practice software is hosted by its vendor, your team is small, and January has never actually broken anything, you do not need a desktop project. Spend the money on backup you have tested instead.
What we do for accountancy
- Hosted desktops and Windows 365 Cloud PCs so practice software runs consistently wherever staff work
- Capacity that flexes for the January self assessment peak instead of being paid for all year
- Practice software supported properly: IRIS, CCH, Digita, Sage, Xero, TaxCalc and the databases behind them
- Client data secured with MFA, Conditional Access and least-privilege access to client folders
- Preparation for Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus, plus help with the client security questionnaires that now gate work
- Email security and archiving, because a practice inbox is a target and a record at the same time
- Backup treated as a recovery commitment with a tested restore, not a nightly job nobody checks
- A UK service desk that understands the difference between a slow month and the last week of January
What the last 12 months looked like
Three questions people ask
Do you provide hosted desktops for accountants?
Yes, and we are deliberately platform-agnostic about which kind.
Can you support our practice management software?
We support the environment it runs in, and we work with the software vendor rather than around them.
How do you handle the January self assessment peak?
By sizing for it deliberately rather than accidentally. On Azure Virtual Desktop that means a scaling plan that adds capacity through the run-up and removes it in February, so peak capacity is paid for during the peak rather than all year.
Ready to talk about your accountancy IT?
A short call about how your IT works today and what your sector asks of it. We will tell you plainly where we would start.
Prefer to talk now? Call us on +44 (0)1482 770583.