Our approach

Skills, not slideware. Your people, not ours.

We hand you AI skills that run on your own data, and we coach your team to run each step of the move themselves. When we leave, the skills and the capability stay with you.

Why

Two premiums, and AI cuts both.

A hyperscaler's managed services are a premium you pay to avoid running operations. A day-rate consultancy is a premium you pay to avoid building capability.

AI lowers the cost of both. A skill can do much of the reading, mapping and planning that used to take a team of consultants, and it can teach your engineers the work as they do it. Neither premium is worth what it was.

So we don't rent you people, any more than we would tell you to rent someone else's operations team.

Three principles

What we sell is capability, not dependency.

Skills, not slideware

Every recommendation comes from an AI skill run against your own data: billing exports, Terraform or OpenTofu state, AWS Config, Azure Resource Graph, Google Cloud Asset Inventory, Kubernetes manifests. You keep the skill and can run it again. A deck is never a deliverable.

Your people, not ours

We work through the team you already have. Each skill pack teaches the work as well as doing it. Every step is rehearsed first and goes live only when your team passes an agreed gate. Our engineer coaches; your team drives.

People only where there is no AI option

We provide a person only under one of four published conditions, the people test, for a fixed term that ends when the condition does.

What each step hands you

Something you own at every step.

Step Skills you run and keep What you end up with Where one of us appears
Price your exit The bill-to-bare-metal estimate (open source) An indicative plan and saving, after operations effort Nowhere
Teardown Teardown skills over your billing exports, infrastructure-as-code state and asset inventory A savings ledger and an exit route per major workload, with a signed review Working sessions and the review
Exit Plan An exit-plan generator over your live inventory A DORA exit plan regenerated every quarter The signed review and one exit test with your team
Move Skill packs for the migration: infrastructure as code, platform bring-up, data migration, cutover rehearsal A migrated estate, run by a team that has passed every gate Coaching, and only what the people test allows
Steady State Capacity planning, patch cadence, price catalogue An estate that stays cheap, and skills that stay current Escalation backstop

Price your exit is public today. The other skills are handed over in the engagement that uses them.

How your team learns the work

Rehearse, pass the gate, then go live.

  1. 01Skill pack. Each step comes as a skill that does the work and a runbook that explains it.
  2. 02Rehearsal. Your team runs the step in staging or a game day first, where nothing is at stake.
  3. 03Gate. A test, agreed in advance, that your team passes before the step goes live.
  4. 04Coaching. If the gate isn't passed, our engineer coaches and your team rehearses again. Your team drives.
  5. 05Gate record. Every gate passed is written down, so you can show your board and your regulator what your team has proven it can do.
Skill pack issued Rehearse in staging Gate passed? yes Your team runs it live Gate record kept no Coaching Skill pack issued Rehearse in staging Gate passed? yes Your team runs it live Gate record kept no Coaching
When we send a person

The people test.

We provide a person only when at least one of these applies.

  1. 01Physical or contractual work. Colocation cages, hardware procurement, cross-connects, and negotiating capacity or terms with providers.
  2. 02Accountability. DORA makes a financial entity's management body ultimately responsible for its ICT risk, and expects its members to understand that risk. Where a plan or review needs a named, competent person and you don't have one yet, ours fills that role for a fixed term while yours is trained. Your management body stays responsible; DORA doesn't let that move to us.Regulation (EU) 2022/2554, Art. 5(2) and 5(4)
  3. 03Irreversible steps before the gate is passed. A production database cutover, BGP changes, recovering a storage cluster. We do it with your team, not for them, and they lead the next one.
  4. 04Capacity, not capability. Your team could learn the work but can't absorb it before a hard deadline, such as a contract renewal or a date a regulator has set. We add bounded hands for the backlog, and the skills still go to your team.

The role is fixed-term and ends when the condition does.

Where the skills run
  • Your assistant, your tenancy. Skills run in the AI assistant you already use, under your agreement with its provider.
  • Read-only. They read billing exports and read-only inventory APIs. They never write to your estate, and no credentials come to us.
  • Plans and runbooks, applied by your pipeline. Move packs produce the plan; your own pipeline applies it.
  • Every run is recorded. Each run records its inputs, the skill version and the price-catalogue date.
  • We see only what you share. Nothing reaches us unless you send it for review.
Two kinds of answer

Skill output is indicative, and says so. A signed Counterweight review states what was checked, against which inputs and skill version, and what wasn't.

What we won't do
  • Sell day-rate staff augmentation.
  • Deliver a slide deck as the output of an engagement.
  • Run skills on your data in our own tenancy, unless you ask us to in writing.
  • Claim a saving that leaves out the operations effort.

Keep the skills. Keep the capability.

Start with the bill you already have: an indicative estimate in minutes, free, from a skill you keep. Then a Teardown, run by your team and reviewed by us, turns it into a costed plan.

Price your exit or book a Teardown