Practice 01
Multi-Cloud Architecture
We design, govern and deliver enterprise cloud platforms spanning AWS, Azure and Google Cloud — built for resilience, security and cost efficiency, with foundations for frontier AI services, agent runtimes and intelligent workloads at any scale.
Follow the architecture
Build the foundation before the workload.
Trace a cloud service from organisational guardrails to recovery. Each boundary has an owner, a policy and an operational decision.
Organisation — Set the rules
Start with ownership, regions and risk appetite. Separate production, non-production and shared services rather than treating a cloud subscription as a blank canvas.
- Assign service and budget owners
- Define account and subscription boundaries
- Agree permitted regions and services
Identity — Establish trust
Federate workforce access and give workloads their own short-lived identities. Keep privileged administration separate from day-to-day delivery.
- Use role-based access and MFA
- Prefer temporary workload credentials
- Record privileged access decisions
Network — Control the route
Choose how workloads communicate across private networks, public endpoints and on-premises systems. A network boundary should enforce a documented trust decision.
- Map ingress and egress
- Resolve private connectivity and DNS
- Inspect cross-boundary traffic
Workload — Run with intent
Select managed services, containers or serverless around workload requirements, not fashion. Couple scaling behaviour to measurable performance and cost objectives.
- Define scaling and quota limits
- Separate configuration from secrets
- Instrument latency and resource cost
Recovery — Prove resilience
Backups alone do not demonstrate recovery. Test restore procedures against agreed recovery-time and recovery-point objectives.
- Agree RTO and RPO with owners
- Exercise restore and failover
- Document operating responsibilities
Hover, focus or tap a flow node to reveal the decisions behind it.
Architecture, explored
Security is a system. Not a checkpoint.
Design questions to resolve
Start with a boundary. Build the bigger picture.
These are illustrative patterns, not a description of a deployed client system or a guarantee of compliance. The right architecture depends on your constraints, risks and operating model.
From concept to implementation
Technical scope & design decisions
Explore the questions, techniques and potential outputs that can shape an engagement. Final scope depends on the requirements and evidence available.
01AWS Architecture & Engineering
End-to-end AWS platform design across compute, networking, data, and managed services — leveraging the full breadth of the AWS ecosystem from EC2 and EKS through Bedrock, SageMaker and agentic developer surfaces such as Kiro and Amazon Q Developer.
Design & implementation focus
- Well-Architected Framework assessments and remediation
- AWS Landing Zone and Control Tower governance implementation
- Multi-account organisation design with Service Control Policies
- Network topology: Transit Gateway, PrivateLink, Direct Connect
- Disaster recovery and multi-region active-active architectures
- FinOps: Reserved Instance strategy, Savings Plans, cost tagging
- Migration planning and execution using AWS Migration Hub and MGN
- AWS Security Hub, GuardDuty and Macie integration
Potential engagement outputs
- Reference Architecture
- Landing Zone Design
- Security Baseline
- Cost Model
- Migration Runbook
- Governance Framework
02Azure Architecture & Engineering
Comprehensive Azure platform design and delivery, from enterprise enrolment and landing zones through to fully managed hybrid and multi-cloud integrations.
Design & implementation focus
- Azure Cloud Adoption Framework implementation and customisation
- Azure Landing Zone accelerator with policy-as-code governance
- Hub-and-spoke and Virtual WAN network topology design
- Azure Active Directory and Entra ID identity architecture
- Azure Sentinel SIEM implementation and playbook automation
- Cost management with Azure Advisor, budgets and anomaly alerts
- Azure Arc hybrid and multi-cloud governance implementation
- Compliance blueprints for regulated industries
Potential engagement outputs
- Azure Landing Zone
- Identity Design
- Security Architecture
- Network Topology
- Governance Runbook
- Cost Blueprint
03Google Cloud Platform
GCP platform design and engineering leveraging Google's data-centric, AI-first cloud for analytics, machine learning, Gemini-class APIs and globally distributed applications.
Design & implementation focus
- GCP resource hierarchy: organisations, folders, projects and billing
- Google Cloud Foundations blueprint and security guardrails
- VPC architecture with Shared VPC and Private Service Connect
- BigQuery enterprise data warehouse architecture and optimisation
- Anthos multi-cloud and on-premises cluster management
- Cloud Armor and BeyondCorp zero-trust access design
- Identity-Aware Proxy and context-aware access policies
- GCP Security Command Centre implementation and alerting
Potential engagement outputs
- GCP Foundation
- VPC Design
- BigQuery Architecture
- Security Posture
- IAM Model
- Anthos Blueprint
04Cloud Migration & Modernisation
Structured migration and application modernisation programmes that move enterprise workloads to cloud with minimal disruption and maximum value realisation.
Design & implementation focus
- Application portfolio assessment and migration wave planning
- TCO and ROI modelling for cloud migration business cases
- Dependency mapping and migration readiness scoring
- Legacy application decomposition and microservices transition
- Database migration: Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL to cloud-native
- Mainframe assessment and incremental modernisation strategies
- Cutover planning, rollback strategies and hypercare support
- Post-migration optimisation and cloud maturity acceleration
Potential engagement outputs
- Migration Assessment
- Wave Plan
- Business Case
- Runbooks
- Dependency Map
- Hypercare Plan
05Landing Zones & Governance
Enterprise cloud foundations that enforce security, compliance, cost transparency, and operational standards from day one — across all accounts and projects.
Design & implementation focus
- Multi-cloud governance model spanning AWS, Azure and GCP
- Policy-as-Code using OPA, Sentinel and Azure Policy
- Tagging taxonomy and enforcement for cost allocation and CMDB
- Identity federation and SSO with corporate identity providers
- Automated account vending and infrastructure bootstrapping
- Compliance-as-Code for PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, HIPAA baselines
- Cloud CMDB integration and asset inventory management
- Drift detection, remediation automation and reporting dashboards
Potential engagement outputs
- Governance Framework
- Policy Library
- Account Vending
- Tagging Standard
- CMDB Design
- Compliance Baseline
06Serverless & Event-Driven Architecture
Cloud-native patterns that eliminate infrastructure overhead, enabling elastic, cost-efficient event-driven systems that scale instantaneously with demand.
Design & implementation focus
- Event-driven architecture patterns: CQRS, Event Sourcing, Saga
- Serverless framework design and deployment automation
- Function cold-start mitigation and performance tuning strategies
- Message bus architecture: Kafka, SQS, EventBridge, Pub/Sub
- API Gateway design with rate limiting, throttling and WAF
- Cost modelling and anomaly detection for serverless estates
- Observability for distributed event-driven systems
- Choreography vs orchestration pattern selection frameworks
Potential engagement outputs
- Architecture Blueprint
- Event Schema Design
- Function Library
- API Design
- Observability Stack
- Cost Model
07Container & Kubernetes Engineering
Enterprise container platform design and engineering — from cluster architecture and network policy through to operator development and platform reliability.
Design & implementation focus
- Multi-cluster Kubernetes architecture for large-scale enterprise workloads
- Service mesh design with Istio and Linkerd for secure east-west traffic
- GitOps delivery pipelines with ArgoCD and Flux
- Cluster autoscaling with Karpenter and KEDA event-driven scaling
- Pod security standards, network policies and OPA Gatekeeper constraints
- Helm chart development, Kustomize overlays and release management
- Container image security scanning and admission controller policies
- Kubernetes custom operators for stateful application management
Potential engagement outputs
- Cluster Architecture
- Service Mesh Design
- GitOps Pipeline
- Security Policy
- Helm Library
- Operator Catalogue
08Cloud Cost Optimisation
Rigorous FinOps practice and tooling that identifies waste, rightsizes resources, and instils a culture of cost accountability across engineering and product teams.
Design & implementation focus
- Cloud spend analysis and waste identification across all accounts
- Reserved Instance and Savings Plan coverage optimisation
- Kubernetes resource quotas, limits and vertical pod autoscaler tuning
- Spot and preemptible instance strategy for fault-tolerant workloads
- Cost allocation tagging governance and chargeback/showback models
- FinOps tooling: AWS CUDOS, Azure Cost Management, Cloud Billing
- Engineering cost-culture workshops and unit economics frameworks
- Continuous cost anomaly detection and automated budget alerting
Potential engagement outputs
- Spend Analysis
- Savings Recommendations
- Tagging Standard
- FinOps Runbook
- Budget Alerts
- Unit Economics Model