The assessment
The Fortnight.
Fourteen days answering one question: what are you actually trying to build, and can your data carry it? It is read-only to begin with, and the findings are written down and yours.
It starts with a call.
We write the scope from that conversation. A fortnight can look at identity, endpoints, cloud spend, backup and how ready your data is, and which of those it covers is decided with you before anything starts.
It is read-only to begin with. Nothing on your estate changes without you asking for it, because you have not hired us yet.
What a fortnight can look at
A model can only be as accurate as the figures it reads, and most businesses have never had to say which copy of a figure is the correct one. This area gets that decided before anything is designed, so the build starts from figures the business has already agreed on.
Most businesses come to us having been asked to do something with AI before anyone has named a task for it, so the first job is to find one. This area works out which tasks are worth doing with a model, what each one would have to beat to be worth keeping, and which of them your data could support as it stands today.
Attackers get in through accounts, and the accounts of people who have left are easy to overlook. Putting this area right usually costs less than any of the others, and every other area on this list depends on it.
You only know a backup works once something has been restored from it. We check this area by running a restore, and it is the only area in which we touch anything.
We report everything in this area device by device, because an average patch age across the estate can hide the one machine that is months behind.
The supplier who sends your cloud and licence bills is not usually paid to make them smaller, so of all these areas this is the one most likely to have gone unchecked for years. We read it line by line.
Some businesses come to us because they need to pass something, such as the CIS Benchmarks, Cyber Essentials or a client security questionnaire with a deadline on it. This area works out how far the estate is from the standard you have been asked to meet, what closing the gap involves, and which parts need a change of settings and which need a project. We get you ready for these standards, and we neither issue them nor hold them ourselves.
What we examine inside each area is the part you are hiring, so it is not published here or anywhere else on this site.
How the fortnight runs.
The order depends on what the first days turn up on your estate, so there is no day-by-day plan to publish.
We agree the scope in writing
It only changes if we both agree to change it, so a fortnight does not turn into a month.
We write it up in plain English
The findings are written so that somebody outside IT can follow them, with the technical detail behind them for your IT team.
We hand it over and you keep it
If your current provider is doing fine, that is what it says.
The fortnight ends in one document.
That document is the written findings, in plain English, and it is yours whether or not you hire us. If you then hire us to build or run something, that work ends in the four documents below, handed over together and written for whoever looks after your estate next.
- High-level designHLDThe shape of what you run, and why each decision was made the way it was.
- Low-level designLLDThe build detail, written so that somebody else could rebuild it from the page.
- As-built documentationWhat is actually there once the work is finished, including anywhere it changed from the plan.
- Configuration baseline and runbooksThe agreed configuration, so anything drifting from it shows up, and the steps for every job that will need doing again.
Everything we write down is yours, including on the way out.
The designs, the baseline, the runbooks and the credentials are handed over whether you are joining us or leaving us. Most of the cost of changing IT provider comes from finding out that nothing was written down, and we do not want that to be the reason anybody stays with us.
Start with a fortnight.
It takes fourteen days, and the findings are yours either way. If you already know what you want built, tell us and we will scope the build instead.