Cloud Advisory & Engineering

We plan migrations, review cloud security, tune performance and cut waste, so your cloud environment is secure, efficient and ready for audit.

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Who this is for

Cloud advisory fits teams that run production workloads in a public cloud and need an independent, technical view of how that environment is built and operated.

  • You are planning a migration from on-premises infrastructure, or from one cloud to another, and need an architecture and sequencing plan before you commit budget.
  • Your cloud bill has grown faster than your usage, and nobody can say which services, accounts or teams drive it.
  • A customer, auditor or investor has asked for evidence that your cloud environment is configured securely, and you need to know the answer before they do.
  • Your application is slow, unreliable or hard to scale, and the cause sits somewhere between the code, the architecture and the platform configuration.
  • You have inherited an environment through an acquisition or a team change, and the documentation does not match what is running.

What's included

Scope is set at the start of each engagement. These are the workstreams we draw on.

  • Migration planning

    We assess your workloads, dependencies and data flows, then define the target architecture, migration waves and rollback points.

  • Cloud security review

    We examine identity and access management, network segmentation, encryption, logging and secrets handling against recognized benchmarks.

  • Configuration assessment

    We use industry-standard tooling and manual inspection to find misconfigured storage, exposed services, excessive permissions and missing guardrails.

  • Architecture and resilience review

    We test your design for single points of failure, recovery objectives, backup integrity and failover behavior.

  • Performance engineering

    We trace latency and throughput problems to their source and recommend changes to sizing, caching, data stores and scaling policy.

  • Cost optimization

    We map spend to workloads, find idle and oversized resources, and recommend commitment and tagging strategies.

  • Compliance mapping

    We map your cloud controls to the frameworks you answer to, so one body of evidence serves several audits.

  • Hands-on engineering support

    Where you want it, we help build the fixes: infrastructure as code, policy guardrails, logging pipelines and landing zones.

How an engagement works

Engagements are phased so you see findings early and can act on them while the work continues.

  1. Scoping and discovery

    We agree objectives, inventory accounts, subscriptions and workloads, and gather architecture documentation and read-only access.

    Typically 1 to 2 weeks

  2. Assessment

    We review configuration, architecture, identity, network paths, data protection and spend, and validate findings against the live environment.

    Typically 2 to 4 weeks

  3. Analysis and prioritization

    We rate each finding by risk and effort, group related issues, and separate quick wins from structural changes.

    Typically 1 week

  4. Readout and roadmap

    We walk your technical and executive teams through findings and agree a sequenced remediation or migration plan.

    Typically 1 week

  5. Remediation support

    We work alongside your engineers to implement fixes and re-test them. Duration depends on the size of the backlog.

    Optional, ongoing

What you receive

  • An executive summary written in plain English, with the findings that matter most and the decisions they require.
  • A technical findings report with evidence, affected resources, risk ratings and specific remediation steps.
  • A target architecture and migration plan, with waves, dependencies, cutover steps and rollback criteria, for migration engagements.
  • A cost analysis that ties spend to workloads and lists savings opportunities ranked by effort.
  • A control mapping that links cloud configuration to the compliance frameworks in scope.
  • A prioritized remediation roadmap with owners and sequencing.

Frameworks and standards

We assess against published benchmarks rather than personal preference.

  • CIS Benchmarks for major cloud platforms and their foundational services
  • NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) 2.0, including the Govern function
  • NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 for systems that carry federal obligations
  • Cloud Security Alliance Cloud Controls Matrix
  • The well-architected frameworks published by the major cloud providers
  • The FinOps Framework for cost management practice
  • SOC 2, ISO/IEC 27001, HIPAA and PCI DSS v4.0.1 control requirements as they apply to cloud workloads

Why Velero

  • Security and cost in one review

    We examine security, reliability, performance and spend together, so a cost saving never quietly removes a control.

  • Senior-led delivery

    Experienced engineers do the assessment and the readout. The work is not handed to a junior team after the sale.

  • Independent advice with hands-on follow-through

    We do not resell cloud services, so our recommendations carry no commission. When you want help implementing them, we work with your engineers.

FAQCommon questions

Do you need administrative access to our cloud accounts?

No. We work with read-only, time-limited access scoped to the accounts in the engagement. Read-only access is enough to review configuration, identity and spend. We agree the access model with you in the scoping phase.

How long does a cloud security review take?

A review of a single production environment typically runs 4 to 8 weeks from scoping to readout. Multi-account organizations or large estates take longer. We confirm the timeline once we understand the number of accounts and workloads.

Can you help with a migration we have already started?

Yes. We can review a migration in flight, check the target design and security baseline, and re-plan the remaining waves. Reviewing early is cheaper than correcting a design after cutover.

Will a cloud review help with SOC 2 or ISO 27001?

Yes. Auditors test cloud controls for access, logging, encryption and change management. We map your configuration to those requirements and fix gaps before an independent assessor tests them. Velero does not issue SOC 2 reports or ISO certificates. A CPA firm issues the SOC 2 report and an accredited body grants ISO/IEC 27001 certification.

Is cost optimization a separate engagement?

It can be either. Many teams add a cost workstream to a security or migration review because the same inventory supports both. We can also scope cost optimization on its own.

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