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ProtoComet
ProtoComet

  • Enterprise-Grade Azure. Startup Speed.

    Senior-led Azure advisory built for growing companies, enterprise rigor, startup speed.

Where this actually breaks

Azure rarely becomes difficult because of Azure itself. It becomes difficult when important decisions are made incrementally — under time pressure, without a clear architectural view, or without anyone owning the bigger picture.

You know you should move to Azure, but the roadmap doesn't fit your reality

Most migration plans are built for large organizations with dedicated teams, governance structures, and months of program management. You may not need a transformation program. You may simply need the right decisions made in the right order — and a practical path forward.

Your Azure environment works, but you're not sure it's built to last

Cloud environments often evolve organically. A developer sets something up, a workload gets added, a workaround becomes permanent. Eventually, the platform works — but its architecture, security, scalability, and operational model aren't as deliberate as they should be.

Azure costs are growing faster than the business, and nobody knows why

Cloud spend tends to become everyone's responsibility and therefore nobody's. Without the right architecture, visibility, and ownership, costs can quietly grow with workloads, environments, and usage. We help identify where the money is going and, more importantly, why.

The business is growing, and now the architecture needs to stand up to scrutiny

An enterprise customer, security review, audit, funding round, or due-diligence exercise can suddenly turn architecture into a business question. Is the platform secure? Can it scale? Is it resilient? Is the environment governed? Are the decisions defensible?

Four services, one architecture register

Azure advisory can start wherever the problem is — strategy, migration, governance, or cost.

Each service can stand alone. All four write into the same register of decisions, so whichever one you start with, the estate ends up with a single, owned design.

DESIGN

Cloud Strategy & Architecture

For estates that grew before anyone designed them, or teams making their first Azure move. The foundation matters: landing zone, identity, network, compute and data — designed deliberately.

  • Baseline of the estate as it actually runs
  • Landing zone and workload pattern design
  • Architectural decisions, with the alternatives and trade-offs recorded

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PROTECT

Security, Governance & Compliance Advisory

For environments where security and compliance can't be an afterthought. Requirements become architecture, policies and controls — with evidence built in, rather than assembled when someone comes asking.

  • Control baseline from what regulation actually requires
  • Identity model and policy as code, enforced
  • Evidence that is generated continuously, not assembled manually

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MOVE

Migration & Modernization Advisory

For organizations moving to Azure or modernizing what they already have. Not everything should move. Not everything should be modernized. We decide what changes, what stays, what goes — and in what order.

  • Portfolio read and 6R verdicts before wave one
  • Migration wave design and pattern review
  • Wave sequencing, dependency mapping and cutover readiness

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PAY

Cost Optimization & FinOps Advisory

For estates where finance sees a number, engineering sees a dashboard, and nobody sees both. Cost becomes an architecture decision — visible, understood and owned, before the next bill becomes a surprise.

  • Allocation you can defend to finance
  • Right-sizing, commitments and scheduling from evidence
  • The structural savings a rate card never finds

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4 Questions every Azure estate has to answer

The four services are the four questions. An estate that can answer all of them in writing is designed. One that cannot is assembled, whatever the diagram says. Every engagement starts by finding out which questions already have an owned answer.

1. Where does it run?

Subscriptions, networks, identity, compute and data patterns. The landing zone and the rules for what goes in it. Answered by Cloud Strategy & Architecture.

Owned in: the architecture register

2. How does it get there?

Which workloads move, in what order, by which pattern, and who decides that a wave is finished. Answered by Migration & Modernization Advisory.

Owned in: the wave plan and gates

3. Who can do what to it?

Identity, policy, network boundaries and the evidence that they hold. Answered by Security, Governance & Compliance Advisory.

Owned in: the control baseline

4. What does it cost, and why?

Allocation, commitments, scheduling and the structural decisions that set the bill. Answered by Cost Optimization & FinOps Advisory.

Owned in: the cost model

What advisory means here, and what it does not

The word is used loosely in this industry. This is the specific arrangement, so you can tell in advance whether it is the one you need.

What ProtoComet does

What it does not do

  • Reads the estate as it actually runs, from the portal and the pipelines, not from the diagram.
  • Decides, and writes each decision down with the alternative that lost and the condition that would reopen it.
  • Reviews your team's or your partner's designs and pull requests against those decisions.
  • Holds the gate: nothing cuts over, goes live or gets a policy exception on the strength of a meeting.
  • Pairs with your engineers on the first instance of any new pattern, so the second one is theirs.
  • Run your estate day to day. Your MSP or platform team does that, and this work makes their job clearer, not smaller.
  • Deliver migration waves by default. That is Application Modernization offering, a different engagement with a different commercial shape.
  • Sell you Azure. There is no reseller margin here and no partner incentive on consumption, which is why the cost advice can be trusted.
  • Replace a penetration test, a certification audit, or a licensed compliance opinion. It prepares you for all three.

How the work actually runs

Three shapes, all senior-only. The right one depends on whether you need a design, a second opinion on someone else's, or a standing decision-maker

Fixed-price design engagement


A defined scope, a written baseline, and a design with decision records, delivered in weeks. This is the usual entry point for Cloud Strategy & Architecture and for the governance and cost baselines. The number is agreed before it starts.

Standing design authority


A monthly retainer for the length of a programme or indefinitely: reviews, decisions, the gate, and a standing line for the questions that cannot wait for a meeting. Cancellable on a month's notice. Migration advisory almost always runs this way.

What senior-only means here


The person reading your policy assignments is the person writing your control baseline and the person your partner argues with at the gate. No associates, no handover, and no design that its author will not be around to defend in eighteen months.


What you hold afterwards

Each service has its own list on its own page. These are the artifacts every engagement produces or updates, because they are the estate's memory

➖Estate baseline. What is actually running, drawn from the portal and the pipelines, with the gaps between it and the official diagram named.


➖Architecture register. The single list of decisions that define the estate, each with its owner, its reasoning and its reopening condition.


➖Decision records. One per significant choice, written so that the person asking "why" in two years gets an answer rather than a name.

➖Review memos. Written findings on any design, plan or change, yours or someone else's, before it ships: a clear accept, amend or decline.


➖Launch checklist. The evidence behind every go-live or policy exception, whoever built it.


➖Quarterly one-pager. What the estate costs, what changed, what is at risk, what is recommended, for your board or just for your own records.

Our Way

I have run the lift-and-shift that cost more than the servers it replaced. It was a good migration by the measures it was given: on time, every server moved, nothing broke. It was also an estate built with no decision about identity, no policy beyond the defaults, and virtual machines sized by copying the physical ones. Two years later it was the legacy estate the next programme was hired to fix.

The problem was never the engineers. It was that nobody in the room had the job of saying "not like that". Advisory, in this practice, is that job: the person accountable for the design being right, separate from the people paid to build it fast.

It also means being willing to disagree with your partner in writing and then keep working with them. Most of the best delivery teams welcome it, because a written decision protects them too.

An Azure estate does not need more people who can build things. It needs one person whose name is on the decision about what gets built.


Yogesh, founder and principal consultant

Questions clients typically ask

It starts with a conversation. Share where you are in your Azure journey. Whether you're exploring strategy, planning a migration, or looking to optimize what's in place. From there, we shape a plan that aligns with your priorities and delivers early, visible wins.

That’s where our consulting approach comes in. We start by understanding your goals, current setup, and constraints. Then we map the right services, whether that’s strategy, modernization, or data and AI, without over-complicating things.

Yes. Many of our clients already have workloads running in Azure or hybrid environments. We help optimize what’s in place, fill gaps, and bring structure so your cloud investments deliver better returns.

Then Cloud Strategy & Architecture is where to start, and the first deliverable is a landing zone designed before the first workload arrives, which is the cheapest moment to get it right. If the question is whether Azure is the right platform at all, that conversation is had honestly. It is the only platform this practice designs for, and you will be told if your constraints point elsewhere.

We are designed as a boutique consulting practice led directly by me as the principal consultant. I stay closely involved across all engagements, ensuring continuity in thinking, decision-making, and delivery. For larger initiatives, delivery capacity is scaled through a trusted partner ecosystem, aligned to the specific needs of the project. While the team may scale, ownership does not—architecture, governance, and quality remain firmly under my oversight. This ensures consistency, accountability, and high standards of delivery, regardless of team size.

Yes. It is the smallest engagement in the practice: the estate baseline, a review memo against the four questions, and a prioritized list of what to fix. Some clients stop there. It is also the honest way to find out whether a larger engagement is needed, rather than being told it is.

Ready to move?

Let's talk about where you are and where you want to go.  and whether modernization is even the right answer this year. If it is not, you will hear that.

Let’s Talk