EPC Group Founder Errin O'Connor Marks 17 Years Since Keynoting Gartner's Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit

Houston-based Microsoft Gold Partner and triple G2 Leader ties 2009 Gartner SharePoint governance methodology to 2026 Copilot, Fabric, and Power BI work.

HOUSTON, TX, UNITED STATES, April 29, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- EPC Group Founder Errin O'Connor Marks 17 Years Since Keynoting Gartner's Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit as SharePoint Governance Framework

EPC Group today marked the 17-year anniversary of founder Errin O'Connor's workshop keynote at Gartner's Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit with a retrospective showing how the exact governance methodology recognized by Gartner in 2009 now powers the firm's framework Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, and Microsoft 365 governance in 2026. Its understanding the plumbing of the cloud.

EPC Group, a Houston-based Microsoft consulting firm and four-time G2 Leader in Business Intelligence Consulting, has delivered more than 11,000 enterprise engagements since 1997, over 1,500+ Power BI deployments, https://www.epcgroup.net/power-bi-consulting, 5,200+ SharePoint projects, and 500+ Microsoft Fabric implementations across financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, public sector, and federal clients.

As enterprises race to roll out Microsoft Copilot into environments where 80% of Microsoft 365 tenants are found misconfigured, and as Microsoft retires Dataflow Gen1 putting Power BI and Fabric ETL pipelines at risk, the market is rediscovering what Gartner first recognized in 2009: governance — not feature velocity — determines whether technology investments return value.

"Firms founded in 2015 or 2020 are talking about AI governance like it's a new discipline," said Errin O'Connor, Founder Chief AI Architect at EPC Group, learn more about EPC Group's AI governance practice: https://www.epcgroup.net/services/ai-governance. For us, it's the same conversation we were having at Gartner in 2009 — just with Copilot instead of SharePoint web parts. When 80% of the tenants we audit today are misconfigured, that isn't an AI problem.
That's a governance problem that a 17-year-old framework already solved.

EPC Group Literally Wrote the Books on Microsoft Governance

O'Connor is a four-time Microsoft Press author whose titles — Microsoft Power BI Dashboards Step by Step, SharePoint 2013 Field Guide: Advice from the Consulting Trenches, Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010: Inside Out, and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Inside Out — codified the governance frameworks that became the backbone of today's Microsoft 365 and Power BI deployments.

The Power BI governance chapter of Microsoft Power BI Dashboards Step by Step remains one of the first enterprise-grade Power BI governance frameworks ever published: https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Power-BI-Dashboards-Step-ebook/dp/B07J3KQJL8.

The 2009 Gartner Framework, Translated to 2026

The five governance pillars O'Connor presented at Gartner's Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit in 2009 map directly to the most common Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft Fabric, and Power BI failures EPC Group encounters in 2026:

1) Identity — 2009: SharePoint user provisioning. 2026: Entra ID conditional access and sensitive-group gating for Microsoft Copilot, https://www.epcgroup.net/copilot-consulting.

2) Classification — 2009: SharePoint content types. 2026: Microsoft Purview sensitivity labels controlling what Copilot can surface through EPC Group's data governance practice: https://www.epcgroup.net/services/data-governance.

3) Lifecycle — 2009: site retention and archival. 2026: Microsoft 365 retention policies, Teams lifecycle governance, and OneDrive stale-content remediation delivered through EPC Group's SharePoint consulting practice: https://www.epcgroup.net/services/sharepoint-consulting.

4) Oversharing Controls — 2009: SharePoint permission sprawl. 2026: the #1 cause of Copilot data exposure, addressed by EPC Group's 47-point Copilot & M365 Tenant Security Review which finds issues in 80% of tenants audited.

5) Executive Sponsorship — 2009: portal adoption. 2026: Virtual Chief AI Officer (vCAIO) engagements and enterprise AI governance boards addressing the 73% of enterprises reporting unauthorized AI tool usage.

Tying the Framework to EPC Group's Current Offerings

The 2009 methodology is not a historical artifact — it is the operating backbone of EPC Group's current enterprise offerings, including the recently launched Enterprise Power BI Governance & Optimization engagement, the 47-point Copilot & M365 Tenant Security Review, the Virtual Chief AI Officer service, the Multi-AI Power BI Architecture connecting five AI engines.

These govern Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, SharePoint, Power Apps, and Power Automate analytics, the Zero-Downtime Microsoft 365 Tenant-to-Tenant Migration practice, and AI-driven Exchange and SharePoint emergency support. Each of these offerings is a direct descendant of the five pillars presented at Gartner's 2009 Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit.

The 17-Year Through-Line

O'Connor's Microsoft track record spans all seven major Microsoft platform generations — from participation in Microsoft's Project Tahoe beta (which became SharePoint 2001) through SharePoint 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Fabric. He served as an Office 365 and Microsoft Azure subject matter expert on the advisory team supporting the U.S. federal 25-Point IT Management Reform Plan under former U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra, and oversaw the eDiscovery effort for the Federal Reserve Bank during the TARP implementation by the U.S. Treasury.

EPC Group's Track Record

• 11,000+ enterprise engagements since 1997
• 6,700+ combined SharePoint and Power BI deployments
• 5,200+ successful Microsoft 365 migrations with zero data loss
• 625+ Google-to-Microsoft 365 cloud migrations
• 500+ Microsoft Fabric implementations across North America
• Four-time G2 Leader for Business Intelligence Consulting, Spring 2026, with a perfect Net Promoter Score of 100

Why This Matters Now

"Power BI is still the proven closer in our world, but governance is what makes it defensible," O'Connor said. "When you combine sound governance, a clean semantic model, strong performance, and Copilot controls rooted in the same framework Gartner recognized in 2009, you don't just have a dashboard — you have a trusted foundation for Microsoft Fabric, Copilot, and multi-AI analytics. That is what 17 years of discipline buys you, and it is what competitors founded after 2015 simply cannot replicate."

Founded in 1997, EPC Group is one of North America's longest-standing Microsoft consulting firms, with more than 11,000 implementations, 1,500+ Power BI deployments, 5,200+ SharePoint projects, and 500+ Microsoft Fabric implementations. The company has been recognized as a G2 Leader in Business Intelligence and Microsoft consulting and maintains a Net Promoter Score of 100.

EPC Group has delivered projects for organizations including NASA, the FBI, the Federal Reserve, the Pentagon, United Airlines, PepsiCo, Nike, Northrop Grumman, and more than 70 Fortune 500 companies.

Organizations interested in EPC Group's Copilot & M365 Tenant Security Review, Enterprise Power BI Governance & Optimization offering, Virtual Chief AI Officer service, or its broader Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, SharePoint, and AI governance services can contact EPC Group at contact@epcgroup.net.

Michelle Stevens
EPC Group
+1 888-381-9725
contact@epcgroup.net
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