Services
Cloud consulting and migration
A cloud program is a set of decisions about architecture, security, cost and operations, followed by a sequence of moves. We help with both parts.
What organizations bring us
Moving to the cloud without a landing zone, a migration strategy per application or a cost model usually produces the same estate in a more expensive place. The common failure points are identity design, network connectivity, untagged spend, and applications moved before their dependencies were understood.
We sequence the work so that foundations come first: account structure, identity, network, logging and guardrails. Applications then move in waves, each with a chosen strategy and a validation plan.
Cloud migration lifecycle
Seven phases. The activity inside each one depends on the workload, but the order rarely changes.
Assess and discover
Know what exists before deciding where it goes.
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1
Assess
Inventory infrastructure, applications, dependencies, data, networking, identity and compliance needs. Capture business criticality, owners, change windows and the cost of the current estate.
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2
Discover
Confirm the inventory with network flow data, agent-based or agentless discovery and interviews. Dependency mapping decides which applications must move together.
Design and prepare
Build the place the workloads will live.
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3
Design
Develop the target architecture: landing zone, account or subscription structure, network segmentation, IAM controls, encryption, logging, monitoring and recovery requirements. Select a strategy per application: rehost, replatform, refactor, repurchase, retire or retain.
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4
Prepare
Build the landing zone with infrastructure as code. Set up identity federation, connectivity, guardrails, tagging, backup and the pipeline the migration will use. Run a pilot workload to prove the path.
Migrate, validate and improve
Move in waves and prove each one.
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5
Migrate
Execute migration waves. Each wave has a runbook, a rollback decision point and a communication plan. Data replication, cutover windows and DNS changes are rehearsed.
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6
Validate
Verify functional behavior, performance, connectivity, security controls, data integrity, resilience and business continuity before decommissioning anything.
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7
Optimize
Improve availability, operational visibility, resource utilization and cost. Right-size, commit where usage is stable, and set budgets and alerts.
Cloud capabilities
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Cloud strategy
Business drivers, workload placement, operating model and a roadmap that finance and engineering both accept.
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Readiness assessment
Skills, security, application and data readiness, with a scored view of gaps.
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AWS, Azure and Google Cloud migrations
Rehost, replatform, refactor and replace, per application.
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Multi-cloud and hybrid
Architectures where regulation, latency, data location or existing investment require more than one environment.
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Cloud-native modernization
Containers, managed services, serverless and event-driven patterns where they reduce operating cost.
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Governance and cost control
Policies, tagging, budgets, showback and FinOps practice.
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Identity and access
Federation, least privilege, workload identity and privileged access in the cloud.
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Cloud security
Posture review, hardening, logging and detection for cloud accounts and clusters.
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Disaster recovery and backup
Recovery objectives per application, backup design, cross-region patterns and tested recovery.
A landing zone, layer by layer
The landing zone is the shared foundation that every workload inherits. Getting it right early avoids rework later.
Organization and accounts
- Management hierarchy
- Account or subscription per environment
- Service control policies
- Tagging standard
Separate blast radius by environment and sensitivity.
Identity
- SSO and federation
- Role design
- Break-glass access
- Workload identity
No long-lived keys where a role can be used.
Network
- Hub and spoke or transit
- Segmentation
- Private endpoints
- DNS and egress control
Connectivity to on-premises and between workloads.
Security services
- Central logging
- Threat detection
- Configuration monitoring
- Key management
Logs go to an account that workload owners cannot change.
Platform services
- CI/CD
- Infrastructure as code
- Container platform
- Secrets management
The paved road teams build on.
Operations and cost
- Monitoring
- Backup
- Budgets and alerts
- Cost allocation
Everyone can see what a workload costs.
Migration strategies, chosen per application
- 1
Rehost
Move as is. Fastest, least change, least benefit from the platform.
- 2
Replatform
Small changes to use managed databases or runtimes.
- 3
Refactor
Change the code or architecture to use cloud-native patterns.
- 4
Repurchase
Replace with SaaS when the application is a commodity.
- 5
Retire or retain
Switch off what is not used. Keep what should not move yet.
The right answer differs by application. We record the reason for each choice so it can be revisited.
A migration wave, illustrated
Illustrative scenario. Not a real client engagement. No outcomes are claimed.
A made-up example showing how one wave may be planned. It is not a client story.
- The situation
- A company runs a customer portal, a reporting database and two batch jobs in a data center. The lease ends in 14 months.
- Assessment
- Dependency mapping shows that the reporting database feeds finance. Batch jobs depend on a file share that three other systems also use.
- Plan
- Wave 1 moves the share and batch jobs. Wave 2 moves the reporting database with a replica. Wave 3 moves the portal. Each wave has its own rollback point.
- Validation
- Row counts, checksum comparisons, a month-end report run in parallel and a failover test before the data center copy is retired.
What you receive
- Cloud readiness assessment
- Application disposition and wave plan
- Landing zone design and code
- Migration runbooks and rollback plans
- Validation and cutover evidence
- DR and backup design
- FinOps dashboard and tagging standard
- Operations handover
Cloud professionals we place
Staffing is a separate engagement from project delivery. You can use either, or both.
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Cloud architect
Designs landing zones, networks and migration approaches.
- AWS
- Azure or GCP architecture
- networking
- IAM
- cost
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Cloud engineer
Builds and operates infrastructure as code.
- Terraform
- scripting
- networking
- monitoring
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DevOps or platform engineer
Builds pipelines and shared platforms.
- CI/CD
- Kubernetes
- GitOps
- observability
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Site reliability engineer
Improves availability and incident response.
- SLOs
- monitoring
- automation
- incident management
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FinOps analyst
Brings cost visibility and accountability.
- Cost allocation
- commitments
- reporting
Related technology
Listed as technologies we work with. This is not a statement of vendor partnership, certification or reseller status.
Questions people ask
Do you recommend one cloud provider?
No. We recommend based on your workloads, skills, contracts and constraints. Where you already have a provider, we start there unless there is a reason not to.
Are you an AWS, Azure or Google partner?
We do not claim partner status or certifications on this site. We list the platforms our consultants work with.
Can we hire cloud engineers instead of a project?
Yes. Cloud architects, engineers and SREs are available on contract or direct hire.
How do you control cost?
Through tagging, budgets, right-sizing and a regular review. Savings depend on usage patterns, so we do not promise a percentage.
Related
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DevOps and platform engineering
CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, Kubernetes, GitOps, observability and internal platforms that help engineering teams ship safely.
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Cloud and identity security
AWS, Azure and Google Cloud security, Kubernetes, DevSecOps, Active Directory, Entra, privileged access, identity governance and zero trust.
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Implementations and migrations
How we take responsibility for complex transformation programs: twelve migration types, a seven-stage method and the deliverables you receive at each stage.
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