Cloud
Azure Cloud Consulting
Azure, run like a product: landing zones with governance built in, CI/CD that ships daily without drama, and a cost line finance can plan around. We migrate, modernise and engineer Azure estates for organisations that need the cloud to just work.
Our Accreditations
CloudOps · DevOps · FinOps
An Azure Practice Built by Engineers, Not Resellers
We are deliberately a single-cloud practice. Everything Synapx builds runs on Microsoft Azure, and as a Solutions Partner for Microsoft Cloud, with the AI Apps on Microsoft Azure specialisation, the focus shows in the detail: Bicep modules hardened across repeated client deployments, landing zone patterns that pass security review first time, and pipelines our engineers can debug quickly because they wrote the templates.
Most cloud problems we meet are not really cloud problems. Deployments are slow because environments are hand-built and nobody trusts them. Bills climb because workloads were lifted, shifted and never revisited. Security reviews drag because policy lives in a document instead of in code. The fix is the same in every case: treat the platform as a product, with an owner, a pipeline and a roadmap.
That is what we mean by CloudOps. Not a ticket queue in another time zone, and not a 24/7 network operations centre, which we are honest enough to say we do not sell. CloudOps at Synapx is senior engineers running your Azure estate the way they run their own: monitored with alerts that mean something, patched and improved through pull requests, costed weekly, documented as they go.
DevOps and CI/CD run through everything we deliver. We build pipelines in Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions, define every environment in Bicep or Terraform, and take teams from monthly release weekends to shipping small changes daily. The same discipline stands behind the Fabric and Databricks platforms and AI environments our other practices build.
And because Azure spend is the fastest way to lose the boardroom's goodwill, FinOps is a first-class discipline here rather than an afterthought: tagging and chargeback, reservations and savings plans, and honest conversations about workloads that should be rearchitected rather than renewed.
Common Challenges We Solve
The Bill Doubled and Nobody Can Say Why
Azure spend climbing month on month, no tagging worth the name, and a finance team asking questions engineering cannot answer with data.
Security Review Blocks Every Release
Policy lives in a document instead of in code, so every deployment becomes a negotiation and the security team says no by default.
Deployments Need a Weekend and a Prayer
Hand-built environments nobody trusts, a fortnightly release board, and improvements that never get proposed because shipping them feels like an ordeal.
The Estate Only One Person Understands
Infrastructure that grew by accretion, undocumented and untested, where the biggest operational risk has a name and a holiday allowance.
Migration Deadline, No Migration Plan
A datacentre contract expiring, an estate full of unknown dependencies, and pressure to lift and shift everything in ways that will cost more for years.
Our Cloud Capabilities
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When every team solves networking, pipelines and environments from scratch, delivery slows and governance frays. We build internal platforms with paved, self-service routes to production, so a new service ships with guardrails in under a day.
- Azure landing zones aligned to the Cloud Adoption Framework
- Infrastructure as Code with Bicep and Terraform
- Entra ID design: identity, RBAC and privileged access
- Azure Policy so governance enforces itself
- Self-service templates that take a repo to production in a day
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Datacentre deadlines, ageing VM estates and infrastructure nobody dares touch. We migrate in planned waves with rollback paths, then run Azure foundations quiet enough that nobody talks about them.
- Estate discovery, dependency mapping and migration waves
- Rehost, replatform or refactor decisions per workload
- Application modernisation: App Service, AKS and serverless
- Azure Monitor, Log Analytics and alerting that means something
- Patching, backup and disaster recovery rehearsals
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If releases need a board meeting and a weekend, the problem is the path to production. We rebuild that path with CI/CD, automation and observability, so teams ship small changes daily instead of scheduling deployments around fear.
- CI/CD pipeline design in Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions
- Environment strategy: ephemeral test, gated production
- Automated testing, code scanning and deployment gates
- Delivery metrics that prove the improvement to leadership
- Pipelines ready for coding agents, paired with our agentic development practice
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The bill doubled and nobody can say why. We give the meter an owner: tagging, rightsizing, a commitment portfolio, and token-level cost control for AI workloads, run as a monthly rhythm rather than a one-off rescue.
- Cost visibility, tagging and chargeback frameworks
- Rightsizing, waste elimination and architectural optimisation
- Reservations, savings plans and commitment portfolio management
- Budgets, anomaly detection and forecasting with Azure Cost Management
- AI cost governance: token budgets, model routing and PTU decisions
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Security fails two ways: the estate nobody hardened, and the estate so locked down engineers route around it. We build zero-trust postures on the Microsoft stack that contain blast radius without stopping delivery.
- Defender for Cloud posture management and workload protection
- Sentinel detection and response, tuned to signals that matter
- Entra ID as the identity perimeter, with privileged access design
- Policy as code and scanning gates built into CI/CD
- Incident response plans and recovery drills that get rehearsed
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Estates are usually strong on the pillar their team cares about and quietly weak on the other four. A review scores real workloads against all five and hands back a remediation backlog ranked by impact and effort.
- Workloads scored against all five Well-Architected pillars
- Read-only analysis: two to three weeks, no disruption
- Remediation backlog ranked by impact and effort
- Cost findings that typically fund the rest of the fixes
- May be eligible for Microsoft funding (MCI or ECIF), subject to Microsoft's eligibility and approval
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AI development either happens on a governed platform or on someone's corporate card. We build Microsoft Foundry environments with the controls in place before the first use case ships: identity, private networking, evaluation and cost governance.
- Microsoft Foundry hubs, projects and RBAC designed for many teams
- Azure OpenAI model deployment, routing and cost management
- Private endpoints and customer-managed keys where sovereignty demands
- Evaluation pipelines: golden datasets, regression gates, red teaming
- Quota and cost governance per team, with chargeback
Migration Choices
Rehost, Replatform or Refactor?
Every workload heading to Azure deserves a deliberate choice between three treatments, because the cheapest migration and the cheapest five years of running costs are rarely the same option. Blanket lift-and-shift is how estates end up costing more in the cloud than they did in the datacentre.
We make this call per workload during discovery, not per estate. A typical migration wave mixes all three.
| Criteria | Rehost (lift and shift) | Replatform | Refactor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Risk | Low technical risk, but carries the old problems across | Low to medium, contained per component | Higher, managed with incremental cutover |
| Cloud-native benefit | Minimal: same operational burden, new postcode | Partial: managed services take over patching and backups | Full: elasticity, autoscaling and per-use pricing |
| We recommend it when | Datacentre exit deadlines and stable legacy workloads | The sensible default for most business applications | Systems that differentiate your business and change often |
The honest pattern across most estates: a minority of workloads justify refactoring, most benefit from replatforming, and a stubborn few should be rehosted and left alone until retirement. Our Cloud Readiness Assessment gives you that split, workload by workload, with the numbers behind it.
Where This Lands in Practice
Landing Zone for a Data Platform
A governed Azure foundation built ahead of a Fabric or Databricks rollout, so the data platform inherits networking, identity and cost controls instead of improvising them.
DevOps Uplift for an In-House Team
Taking a team from manual releases to CI/CD with infrastructure as code, gated deployments and delivery metrics, then handing over the keys with training rather than a dependency.
FinOps Rescue on Runaway Spend
A spiking Azure bill traced to its causes, quick wins banked in the first month through rightsizing and reservations, and an operating model so it never creeps back.
Datacentre Exit
A dated VM estate migrated in planned waves ahead of a contract deadline, with dependency mapping, cutover rehearsals and a rollback path for every wave.
AI-Ready Foundations
Azure environments prepared for AI workloads: private endpoints, Entra ID, quota and cost governance, so the AI team can build without waiting on infrastructure.
Security and Governance Uplift
An existing estate brought up to standard: Azure Policy, Defender for Cloud baselines and a Well-Architected Review with a prioritised, costed remediation plan.
Six Proven Steps. Every Project, Every Time.
Strategic. Secure. Scalable.
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Discovery
Workshops to map your systems, challenges and opportunities with key stakeholders.
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Planning & Proposal
A clear proposal with our recommendations, so you know what you are buying and why.
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Preparation
Data from spreadsheets, feeds and databases organised and sanitised, ready to build on.
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Design & Development
Agile Scrum delivery, with new functionality every sprint.
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Testing & Acceptance
Internal testing, then your user acceptance testing before go-live.
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Maintenance & Support
Ongoing support, training and maintenance after go-live.
Cloud Solutions FAQ
Common questions about how Synapx delivers Azure migration, landing zones, CloudOps, DevOps and FinOps.
Do you only work with Microsoft Azure?
Yes, by design. Deep expertise in one cloud beats a shallow spread across three. Synapx is a Solutions Partner for Microsoft Cloud and a Solutions Partner for Cloud & AI Platforms, with the Analytics on Microsoft Azure and AI Apps on Microsoft Azure specialisations, and everything we build, from landing zones to pipelines, assumes Azure. If you are committed to AWS or GCP, we are the wrong partner, and we will say so.
Do you provide 24/7 managed cloud operations?
No, and we would rather tell you that on the first call. We are not a network operations centre. What we provide is engineering-led CloudOps: senior engineers who monitor, patch, improve and cost-optimise your estate through code, with incident response during working hours and automation doing the night shift.
How long does an Azure landing zone take?
A production-ready landing zone, with identity, networking, policy and cost management all defined as code, typically takes 4–6 weeks. Workload migrations then run in waves on top of it. If a partner quotes you two days for this, ask what happens at your first security review.
What does a FinOps engagement look like?
It starts with a cost review that usually pays for itself: tagging, rightsizing, waste and commitment coverage. Quick wins land in the first month; the rest becomes an operating rhythm of budgets, anomaly alerts and a monthly conversation between finance and engineering. See our FinOps page for the full picture.
Can Microsoft funding offset our migration costs?
It can. Microsoft runs funding programmes for qualifying migration and modernisation projects, including Microsoft Commerce Incentives (MCI) and End Customer Investment Funds (ECIF), and as a Solutions Partner for Microsoft Cloud we can scope, apply for and deliver against them. Funding is always subject to Microsoft's eligibility and approval, and depends on your agreement and workloads, so we check early in discovery.
Do you migrate applications as well as infrastructure?
Yes. Alongside VM estates we replatform applications onto App Service, AKS and Azure SQL, and refactor the systems that justify it. Every workload gets an explicit rehost, replatform or refactor decision during assessment, because the cheapest migration and the cheapest five years of running costs are rarely the same option.
Can you work alongside our internal IT team?
That is the normal arrangement. We design and build with your team in the repository from day one, and enablement is part of the scope. The goal is that your engineers can run and evolve the platform confidently once we step back.
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