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- You have an internal team, or one capable person, and one question they have not had to answer before
- A decision is blocked on expertise rather than on effort: which platform, whether to migrate, what this will actually cost
- You have had a proposal from somebody and want it read by a person with no stake in it being accepted
- A project has stalled and nobody can say precisely why
The default when a decision is blocked on expertise is to defer it, and deferral is rarely neutral: a licence auto-renews at the wrong tier, a platform choice gets made by whoever shouts loudest, or the project quietly stops being mentioned. The cost is not the consultancy fee, it is another year of the thing you already know is wrong.
The thing everyone is actually afraid of
Not the fee. The report. Almost everyone who has bought IT consultancy has at some point paid for a document that surveyed the estate, listed observations, recommended nothing in particular, and was never opened again. It is the dominant failure mode of this industry and everyone working in it knows it.
It happens for a structural reason rather than a lazy one. A survey is easy to produce and impossible to be wrong about, so it is the safe thing for a consultant to deliver. A recommendation can be wrong, which is precisely what makes it worth paying for.
What we do about it
Three things, and you should hold any consultancy to all three rather than only us.
- The output is agreed in writing before we start, and it is narrower than a report: the question it answers, the recommendation, the exceptions, and a sequence with owners. Somebody has to actively decide not to do item one, which is a much higher bar than quietly not reading a survey.
- The scope and the price are fixed before anything starts. Open-ended day rates are how these engagements become uncomfortable. If the work turns out larger than either of us thought, you hear that before we do it, not after.
- The recommendation names what to do without us. Ask for this from anyone. A recommendation that only works if the person who wrote it is involved is not advice, it is a proposal wearing a different hat.
What it costs you to find out
Forty-five minutes, and nothing else. The assessment that tells you whether this is a consultancy question is free, produces a written summary you keep, and carries no obligation. That is possible because we are not starting from a blank page: we run the cost, posture and application analysis through our own tooling, built over years of doing the same work by hand. How much time that saves depends entirely on the estate, so we will not put a number on it, but it is the reason the first conversation costs you three quarters of an hour rather than a scoping exercise.
Consultancy itself is scoped and priced as its own engagement, so the advice never depends on you buying anything afterwards, and where a recommendation involves something we sell, it says so. If you want to test that, ask what we would recommend if you did not use us. We like that question, because the recommendation survives it.
Where our judgement is worth buying
Deliberately a short list. Credentials in this market attach to people rather than companies, and a consultancy claiming depth in everything has depth in nothing.
Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365
Which platform, sized how, at what genuine total cost, and whether a mixed estate is the right answer. This is the narrowest and deepest of our specialisms.
AVD consultancy →Microsoft licensing and Azure cost
Tier mix, shelfware, Azure rightsizing and renewal timing, reviewed together rather than as separate exercises run months apart.
Licensing and cost management →AI and Copilot readiness
Whether your permissions and sharing model can survive a tool that inherits them exactly, and what has to be true before a pilot is worth running.
AI engineering →Legacy applications and modernisation
What is genuinely tied to an old platform, what only appears to be, and the cheapest route off it that does not involve a rewrite.
Legacy modernisation →Expertise behind another provider
For MSPs, vendors and partners who need one specific piece of judgement under NDA, delivered in your name rather than ours.
White label consultancy →34% Azure spend saved
How a continuous cost-optimisation programme recovered around a third of a client's Azure spend, funded from waste rather than capacity.
Read what we actually didA growing UK business. Our case studies are anonymised at our clients’ request, so they name no client and no sector.
Who is advising you
The question worth asking of any consultancy is not whether the company holds certifications, but whether the people advising you have built the thing you are about to build.
Our consultants are Microsoft cloud specialists who do this work continuously rather than occasionally, and engagements are delivered by senior people rather than passed down to whoever is free. Between them the team covers the platforms this page lists: virtual desktop and Cloud PC design, Microsoft 365 and identity, security and compliance, Azure cost, and the packaging and migration work that moves legacy applications.
The bar they work to is set by our founder, Ryan Mangan, a Microsoft MVP awarded specifically for Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365 rather than a broader Azure category, author of Packt’s Mastering Azure Virtual Desktop across two editions, and a Chartered Fellow of the BCS. That is a narrow specialism, stated narrowly, and it is the standard the team is measured against rather than a badge on a website.
What we would do
If a decision is blocked on expertise and you have people who can execute once it is made, buy the consultancy and keep the execution in-house. That is the cheapest correct answer, and it leaves the knowledge with your team rather than with us.
- If the question is really about capacity rather than judgement, a managed service or out-of-hours cover is the right purchase and consultancy will not fix it.
- If you want the work done as well as decided, say so at scoping so it is priced as delivery rather than as advice with an implementation surprise attached.
When we are not the answer: If you already know what you want to do and are looking for someone to validate it, we are an expensive way to buy agreement, and you may not get it. If what you actually need is a second pair of hands for a fixed period, hire a contractor, which will be cheaper than us and better suited to the job.
Common questions
How do I know I will not just get a report that nobody acts on?
By deciding what the output is before the engagement starts, and by making it something narrower than a report. That is the single most useful thing a buyer can insist on, from us or anyone else. A document that surveys your estate and lists observations is easy to produce and easy to ignore. A document that answers one question, states a recommendation, names the exceptions and gives a sequence with owners is harder to write and much harder to leave on a shelf, because somebody has to actively decide not to do the first item. We agree that output in writing before starting, and if what you actually need is for somebody to do the work rather than to advise on it, we would rather scope that instead.
What does a consultancy engagement actually cost?
It is scoped and quoted, because the honest answer depends on the question rather than on your headcount. What we can commit to is the shape: a fixed scope and a fixed price agreed before anything starts, so the number does not move unless you change what you asked for. Open-ended day rates are how consultancy engagements become uncomfortable, and a fixed scope is the buyer's protection against that. If the work turns out to be larger than either of us thought, we tell you before doing it rather than after, and you decide.
Will you tell me if the answer is that I do not need you?
Yes, and it happens. The most common version is that the capability you need is already in a licence you hold and switched off, in which case the useful outcome is a configuration list your own team can work through rather than an engagement with us. The second most common is that the question is really a delivery question rather than an advisory one, and you would be better served by somebody doing the work. Neither of those is a wasted conversation, and both are cheaper for you than an engagement that was never the right shape.
Who actually turns up, and what happens after the recommendation?
A senior consultant who works in the area you are asking about, not a generalist passed the file. Engagements are delivered by specialists rather than handed down to whoever is free, and for anything on the virtual desktop or Windows 365 side our founder is directly involved, because that is the specialism the practice is built around. Afterwards, the recommendation is yours: it names a sequence with owners, so your own team can execute it without us if that is the cheapest correct answer, and we will say so when it is. If you would rather we did the work as well, say so at scoping and it is priced as delivery rather than arriving as an implementation surprise.
What makes this different from any other IT consultancy?
Two things you can check rather than take on trust. The first is that the output is agreed in writing before anything starts and is narrower than a report: the question it answers, the recommendation, the exceptions, and a sequence with owners. The second is depth in a stated few areas rather than breadth across everything, which is why this page lists five specialisms and not twenty. The right question to ask of anyone, us included, is not whether they are certified but whether they have built the thing you are about to build, and then to ask what they would recommend if you did not use them.
What is the question?
Describe the decision you are stuck on, in whatever detail you have. We will tell you whether it is a consultancy question, a delivery question, or something already sitting switched off in a licence you hold. If it is the third, that is the end of it and it costs you nothing.
Tell us the question, not the project
Describe the decision you are stuck on. We will tell you whether it is a consultancy question, a delivery question, or something already sitting switched off in a licence you hold.