Advisory
An honest independent view of your infrastructure
Senior architects with deep enterprise experience review what you have, identify what's at risk, and tell you what to fix first — and why.
4–6 wks
Typical review duration
15+ yrs
Senior architect experience
6 layers
Architecture areas covered
Written
All findings with evidence
Review scope
What we look at — and what we produce
Each review is scoped to your specific situation. These are the assessment types we conduct, either individually or as a combined engagement.
Infrastructure risk assessment
A structured review of your current infrastructure for single points of failure, undocumented dependencies, over-provisioned blast radius, and architectural debt that creates hidden operational cost. We produce a prioritized risk register, not a general observation list.
Deliverable: Prioritized risk register with remediation cost estimates
Cloud readiness analysis
Before you migrate anything, understand what should move, what should stay, and what should be retired. We assess workload characteristics, data gravity, compliance constraints, and total cost of ownership across deployment models.
Deliverable: Workload classification matrix + migration candidacy report
Security review
An architectural security assessment — not a penetration test. We examine your management layer design, identity model, network segmentation, data flows, and the gap between your documented security setup and how your systems actually behave.
Deliverable: Security architecture gap analysis
Performance and scalability audit
Where is your architecture constrained? Which components will break first under load? Where does latency accumulate? We instrument your stack, model your traffic patterns, and produce a clear picture of your capacity ceiling and where it sits.
Deliverable: Capacity model + performance bottleneck report
Data architecture review
How data moves through your organization — ingestion, storage, transformation, access — reviewed against your current and future analytical needs. We identify pipeline fragility, data quality debt, and the gaps between what your data team can produce and what the business can consume.
Deliverable: Data estate assessment + modernization recommendations
IaC and DevOps maturity review
An assessment of your infrastructure automation, CI/CD pipelines, configuration management, and GitOps practices. We evaluate consistency, drift risk, change velocity, and how much of your infrastructure is reproducible from code versus held together by institutional knowledge.
Deliverable: IaC maturity scorecard + automation gap analysis
Coverage areas
Every layer of the stack, examined systematically
We follow a structured review methodology across six architecture domains. Every finding is mapped back to a specific area so you know where the risk lives.
Compute
- VM and container density
- Bare metal utilization
- Auto-scaling configuration
- Resource quotas and limits
Networking
- Segmentation model
- Ingress/egress design
- Private connectivity
- DNS architecture
Storage
- Data residency compliance
- Backup coverage and RPO/RTO
- Encryption at rest
- Tiering policy
Identity & Access
- IAM model and least privilege
- Privileged access controls
- Service account hygiene
- Federation and SSO design
Observability
- Monitoring coverage gaps
- Alerting quality
- Log retention and retention policy
- Distributed tracing
Resilience
- Single points of failure
- DR runbooks and test frequency
- Chaos engineering coverage
- Blast radius modeling
Process
How a review engagement runs
Structured enough to be consistent. Flexible enough to follow what the evidence surfaces.
Scoping
Day 1–3
We agree on the scope of the review — which systems, which layers, which risk categories. We request documentation, access requirements, and a list of stakeholders to interview. Engagements don't start until the scope is signed off.
Signed scope document + information request list
Discovery
Week 1–2
Our architects review documentation, conduct stakeholder interviews, and — where access is granted — examine live environments directly. We follow a structured interview guide but reserve the right to follow threads that the documentation raises.
Discovery notes + preliminary findings log
Analysis
Week 2–3
We synthesize findings into a coherent architecture picture — mapping dependencies, identifying risk concentrations, and cross-referencing what was documented against what we observed. We challenge our own findings before presenting them.
Internal analysis draft + findings validation list
Report
Week 3–4
A written assessment with findings organized by severity, supporting evidence, and specific remediation recommendations. We present findings in a working session before the final report is issued — not as a surprise.
Architecture review report + executive summary
Remediation support
Optional, 4–8 weeks
For engagements where remediation follows immediately, our architects remain available during the fix phase to validate that changes address the root cause — not just the symptom. Available as a time-and-materials retainer.
Remediation validation + updated risk register
Use Cases
When organizations commission an architecture review
Manufacturing
Pre-modernization architecture baseline
The Situation
A manufacturer is about to embark on a cloud migration program. The CIO wants an independent assessment of the current environment before committing to a migration approach — particularly around OT/IT boundary risks and data residency obligations that the internal team hasn't fully mapped.
Our Approach
We conduct a 4-week architecture review focused on the OT/IT boundary, production network segmentation, and data flows. The output is a complete dependency map, a prioritized list of migration blockers, and a sequenced recommendation for which workloads should migrate first, last, and not at all.
Financial Services
Post-merger infrastructure risk assessment
The Situation
Two financial institutions have merged. The combined entity is operating two separate infrastructure stacks with unclear interdependencies, duplicate tooling, and an integration plan that was written during due diligence without full technical visibility.
Our Approach
We map the combined infrastructure from scratch — independently of both internal IT teams — to build an objective picture of the architecture as it actually exists. Findings are organized into a risk register that the integration program can work from, rather than discovering problems during execution.
Is this right for you?
This is a good fit if you…
- You're about to make a significant technology investment and want an independent view before committing
- Your infrastructure has grown organically for years and you're not sure what the real risks are
- You've had reliability or performance issues and your internal team can't identify the root cause
- Your team is proposing a major architectural change and you want a sanity check from someone outside
- You need an external, written opinion for a board decision, investor review, or regulatory audit
You might want to start elsewhere if…
- You need someone to build or implement something — that's a delivery engagement
- You need a full technology strategy document — that's a consulting engagement
Common questions
Questions people ask before getting started
Plain answers. No jargon. If something isn't covered here, just ask us directly.
Want an independent view of your infrastructure?
Tell us what decision you're trying to make or what risk you're trying to understand. We'll scope a review engagement around that.