Azure and cloud migration consulting
Price it before you build it.
We plan Azure, AWS and hybrid migrations so you know what the move costs, what it breaks and what it depends on before a single workload leaves the building.
How we approach it
Most migrations go wrong before anyone touches a server. The estimate was a guess, the dependency nobody mapped turns up during cutover, and the first monthly bill looks nothing like the spreadsheet. None of that is a cloud problem. It's a planning problem, and it's cheap to fix on paper.
So the first piece of work is a gate: a fixed-price discovery, sized to your environment. We inventory what's actually running, trace what talks to what, and find the things everyone forgot. The scheduled job on a server under someone's desk. The report that reads straight from a production database. The vendor connection nobody has the password for. Then we price the target: a monthly number sized from how your workloads actually run, not from a list price.
The business case for staying usually never gets written, so we write that one too. Sometimes the right answer is a hybrid where the plant or line-of-business systems stay put and everything around them moves. Sometimes it's a managed database instead of a lift-and-shift virtual machine. Sometimes it's leaving a system alone until its hardware comes up for refresh. You get the trade-offs in plain terms, with costs on both sides, and you choose.
When the work goes ahead, we sequence it so each step can be rolled back: identity and networking first, then data, then the applications, with a cutover plan that names who does what and what done looks like. We work alongside your team or your implementation partner. We don't need to click every button. We need the plan to be right.
What you get
- An environment inventory: servers, databases, applications, scheduled jobs and external connections
- A dependency and risk register, each risk ranked with a proposed owner
- A target architecture for Azure, AWS or hybrid, including identity and network design
- A monthly cost estimate for the target, next to the cost of staying where you are
- A migration sequence and cutover outline, with a rollback point at each step
- A scope and estimate for the build, so the next decision is an informed one
What a first engagement looks like
- 1
Discovery
The gate itself: inventory, dependencies, a target design and a monthly number for running it.
- 2
Fixed price
You know the price before we start. We set it from the size and scope of the discovery, so it fits your organization rather than a one-size package. If we find something that would change the scope, we tell you first, and nothing extra happens without your OK.
- 3
Written read-out
A written document: what we found, what we'd do, what it costs, and what we'd leave alone.
- 4
You decide, in writing
Nothing moves to a build until you say yes in writing. Taking the read-out and doing the work yourselves is a fine outcome too.
Every engagement is led by a senior architect, and we bring in specialists from our bench when the work calls for them. After the first job, some clients keep us on as a fractional CIO or CTO for the decisions that keep coming.
Questions CIOs ask
Should we lift and shift, or re-architect first?
Usually neither across the board. Move what's cheap to move as it is, modernize the few systems where a managed service clearly pays for itself, and leave alone the ones that are about to be replaced. The discovery tells you which is which.
Will our cloud bill be higher than what we pay now?
It can be, especially if servers move at their current size and run around the clock. On-premises cost hides in depreciation and cloud cost arrives every month. We size from actual usage and put both numbers side by side, so nobody is surprised.
Azure or AWS?
If you already run on Microsoft 365 and Entra ID, Azure usually has the shorter path for identity and licensing. Your workloads and your team's skills decide the rest.
Can we migrate without downtime?
Most systems can move inside a short, planned cutover window. The few that truly can't stop get replication and a tested rollback.
We already have an implementation partner. Where do you fit?
On your side of the table. We write the plan and the specification the partner builds to, check the work against it, and give you a second opinion from someone who isn't selling the hours.
An example
A migration plan the client could run without us
A mid-size industrial technology company needed to move a legacy workflow platform and its reporting off an aging on-premises SQL Server and into Azure.
The discovery came in at the agreed fixed price and produced an environment inventory, a dependency and risk register, a final provisioning specification for the Azure target, a cutover outline and a scope recommendation. With the plan in hand, the client decided to run the build with its own team and implementation partner. That's the gate working as designed.
Read the Azure migration case studyWhere this applies
Get the number before the build.
A 30-minute cloud migration discovery call on Microsoft Teams, times in ET.