Most cloud consulting is sold by an agency: an account manager, a proposal, a bench of juniors learning on your invoice, and a procurement process that eats a month before anyone touches a keyboard. GenOps cloud consulting is the opposite of that on purpose — one AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional, direct access, and pricing that's actually transparent because it's proven on the two live audit services first.
Four ways to work together
| Model | What it is |
|---|---|
| Assessment | A prioritised review of what's risky, wasteful, or fragile right now |
| Implementation | Design and build it — empty account to production-ready |
| Managed Operations | Once it's live, keep it running: monitoring, incidents, iteration |
| Enablement | Your team takes over — you're not locked into needing outside help forever |
These aren't mutually exclusive tiers you're funneled through — most engagements start as an assessment and only move to implementation if the assessment says it's worth it.
Eight capability areas
Foundations & Networking, Compute & Containers, CI/CD & IaC, Observability & Monitoring, AI/ML Infrastructure, and Multi-Cloud (GCP & Azure) are all pattern work — pull from real architecture experience, applied to your specific setup.
Two areas are different: Security & DevSecOps and Cost Optimization aren't just consulting patterns — they're live, flat-fee audit services running right now, the same ones covered in the two companion posts on this blog (security audit, cost audit). If your need fits one of those, you don't need a scoping call first — you can just book it.
What "not an agency" actually means
- Direct access — you talk to the person writing the Terraform, not a relay through an account manager
- Transparent pricing — quoted upfront, proven on the live audit services rather than asked to trust a rate card
- Documented approach — written down, not tribal knowledge you take on faith from a sales deck
- Fast start — a scoping call, then a start date, no multi-week procurement maze
A real (and a hypothetical) example
The consulting page shows engagement patterns two ways: one is a description of an approach — landing zone from zero, taking one unstructured AWS account to a multi-account foundation with segmentation, centralized logging, and IAM boundaries, so every new workload starts on solid ground. The other two are live and running right now, not hypothetical: the cost and security audits described above.
That distinction matters. A lot of consulting pages describe capability in the abstract. Two of these are things you can book this week and get a deliverable back within 5 business days.
Credentials, for what it's worth
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional, verified on Credly, with hands-on GCP and Azure experience for teams that aren't fully on one cloud. Not the whole story, but the part that's independently checkable.
Have something specific in mind — or just want to talk about what you're building? The fastest way in is still a live audit if your need fits one; otherwise, a scoping call costs nothing to start.
📢 Have questions or feedback? Drop a comment below or connect with me on Twitter/X@spysood!