Skip to main content
AAG Cloud Connect
Cloud and licensing

Cloud consulting and architecture

Cloud strategy that survives contact with your budget, your bandwidth, and your team.

Talk to an expertAll services
Practice area
Cloud and licensing
Primary platform
Azure
Usually sponsored by
CIOs and IT managers
Delivered from
Accra, Ghana
The outcome

A target architecture and cost model your engineers agree is buildable and your board can approve.

Readiness assessments, target architecture, and cost governance grounded in how your organisation actually operates.

Business problems addressed

Why organisations ask for this work

These are the situations that lead to this conversation. If more than one is familiar, there is usually a case worth examining before anything is bought.

Discuss your position

  1. Advice that ignores your constraints

    Designs assume connectivity, headcount, and change appetite the organisation does not have.

  2. Cloud spend that drifts

    Consumption grows without tagging, budgets, or anyone owning the monthly review.

  3. Decisions nobody can defend later

    Platform choices were made informally, so procurement and audit questions cannot be answered.

Capabilities

What this service covers

Cloud advice generated in a vacuum tends to fail in predictable ways. It assumes connectivity that is not there, headcount that has not been hired, and change appetite the organisation does not have. The result is a well-argued document that nobody executes.

Our consulting practice starts from constraints rather than ideals. What does your link to the outside world actually sustain at peak? Which applications are genuinely business-critical, and which are simply old? Who will administer this in eighteen months? What does finance need to see before releasing capital? The architecture follows from those answers.

We are Microsoft-led because that is where our deepest bench sits, but we are not Microsoft-only. Where AWS, Google Cloud, or a well-specified on-premises platform is the better answer for a workload, we will say so and explain the trade-off in cost, risk, and operational effort. Advice you cannot argue with is not advice — it is a sales pitch.

Own your Microsoft commercials and build cloud foundations that finance and engineering both recognise.

  • Cloud readiness assessment

    Applications, dependencies, identity, connectivity, and operational maturity reviewed before any commitment of spend.

  • Target architecture design

    Reference designs for hybrid and cloud-native estates, documented to a level your team can actually build and run.

  • Cost modelling and FinOps

    Consumption forecasting, tagging discipline, budget alerts, and reserved capacity planning so cloud spend stays deliberate.

  • Security and compliance posture

    Identity, network segmentation, data protection, and logging reviewed against practical baselines rather than aspirational frameworks.

  • Architecture workshops

    Working sessions with your engineers and stakeholders so decisions are understood and owned, not handed down.

  • Executive and board briefings

    The same recommendation translated into investment, risk, and timeline language for people who do not need the packet diagrams.

Deliverables and outcomes

What you receive, and what changes

Every engagement produces written artefacts. They are listed here so the scope is agreed before work starts rather than interpreted afterwards.

Artefacts you receive

  • Current-state assessment with dependency mapping
  • Target architecture diagrams and design decisions register
  • Phased roadmap with effort, sequencing, and prerequisites
  • Indicative cost model for build and steady-state run
  • Risk register with mitigations and owners

Outcomes to expect

  • A plan your engineers agree is buildable
  • Investment decisions supported by a defensible cost model
  • Fewer mid-project surprises from dependencies discovered too late
  • Shared understanding between IT and the board about what is being bought and why
Engagement process

How delivery runs

Each phase has a defined entry and exit point, so you always know what is being decided, by whom, and what happens next.

  1. Discovery

    Stakeholder interviews, technical inventory, and connectivity review across sites.

  2. Analysis and options

    Two or three credible options, each with cost, risk, and operational implications spelt out.

  3. Design and roadmap

    Agreed target architecture with a sequenced delivery plan and clear decision points.

  4. Handover or delivery

    Your team executes with our support, or we deliver the roadmap as a scoped programme.

Platforms and partners

The technology this service touches

Platform choice follows the workload. These are the products most often involved in this practice area, and the vendor relationships behind them.

  • Azure
  • AWS
  • Google Cloud
  • Hybrid

Accredited means AAG Cloud Connect holds that vendor’s partner mark. Capability means we design, deliver, and support the platform without holding a formal partner designation for it. Both are stated plainly so nothing is implied by a logo.

  • Microsoft

    Accredited partner

    Cloud platforms

    The centre of our practice. We hold the Cloud Solution Provider relationship, so subscriptions, licensing advice, and first-line escalation sit with us.

  • Google Cloud

    Accredited partner

    Cloud platforms

    Used most often for data and analytics work, and for organisations with an established Workspace footprint.

  • Amazon Web Services

    Accredited partner

    Cloud platforms

    Where a workload is better served by AWS, we design and operate it properly rather than leaving it unsupported at the edge of the estate.

See the full vendor ecosystem
Who this is for

Who this service is for

Work of this kind is normally sponsored by one of a small number of roles, each of whom is measured on something different.

  • CIOs and IT managers
  • CFOs
  • Programme sponsors

CIOs and IT managers

You need architecture that your team can actually run, vendors consolidated, and a partner who escalates instead of deflecting.

CFOs and finance leaders

You need licence spend that reconciles, renewals without surprises, and a cost model you can defend in a budget review.

COOs and operations leaders

You need uptime, continuity that has been tested, and fewer working days lost to technology friction.

Evidence

2–4 weeks

typical assessment

Discovery before commitment

A readiness engagement covers applications and dependencies, identity, measured connectivity, and operational maturity. The output is two or three credible options with cost, risk, and operational implications spelt out, plus a design decisions register so the reasoning survives staff changes.

This describes an engagement pattern typical of this service. It is not an account of a named client, and no figures here are drawn from a specific organisation.

Questions

Frequently asked

The questions organisations genuinely ask before committing budget to this work.

Most readiness engagements run between two and four weeks, depending on estate size and how quickly we can get access to systems and stakeholders. Larger multi-site organisations take longer, and we will say so before we start rather than after.

Works well with

Related services

These practice areas are commonly delivered alongside this one, because the gaps between them are where problems tend to appear.

Talk to us about Cloud consulting

Send a short brief on where you are now with Cloud consulting. You will get a considered response setting out what we would need to establish next, rather than a generic brochure.

Your enquiry will be tagged Cloud consulting so it reaches the right specialist first time.

Talk to an expertExisting customer support