Cloud consulting, migration, infrastructure and DevOps: which of the four is yours
Four cloud services with four different endings: consulting reads an estate you already run, migration moves one onto AWS or Azure, infrastructure development builds one that does not exist yet, and DevOps rebuilds how a change reaches production.
01Work
Four jobs, and only one of them moves anything
All four get sold as cloud work, and they finish in four different places. The one you want is the one whose ending is the thing you need to be true.
Reading an estate nobody can explain
An AWS or Azure environment that already runs, read across its architecture, security and spend, and handed back as a ranked plan. Cloud consulting stops before anything is committed, which is what makes it the cheap first move when the bill is the symptom and the cause is still a guess.
Getting something from where it runs to where it belongs
Applications, data and integrations already running on on-premise servers or an ageing cloud account, moved onto AWS or Azure. A migration is over when the old estate is switched off, not when the new one boots. Where the architecture itself has run out, the honest answer is modernization instead.
Building an environment that is not there yet
Networking, compute, storage, deployment pipelines, security controls and the cost model, designed together and then operated once they carry traffic. Cloud infrastructure development relocates nothing and ranks nothing, and half of it is settling who holds the environment on day 31.
Shortening the path from commit to production
The environment and the software both already exist, and the release is the constraint. DevOps consulting rebuilds that path: CI/CD, infrastructure as code, observability, and security checks that run inside the pipeline rather than after it.
02Services
Which of the four cloud services do you need?
It is decided by what already exists. Nothing yet, and it is infrastructure development. Something running that has to reach somewhere else, migration. Something running that nobody can explain, consulting. Something running well that is painful to release, DevOps.
| Service | What you are actually buying |
|---|---|
| Cloud consulting | Nobody can explain itA ranked plan for the architecture, security and spend of an environment you already run, produced from read-only access. It ends where a change would be committed, and "change nothing" is one of the answers it can come back with.Cloud consultingOr book a meeting |
| Cloud migration | It has to moveThe sequencing and execution of the move, ending with the source estate switched off rather than left running beside the new one. A B2B CRM platform came off on-premise infrastructure onto Azure this way; a UK hotel-booking platform reached near-zero downtime after its migration.Cloud migrationOr book a meeting |
| Cloud infrastructure development | It does not exist yetThe environment itself, defined in Terraform rather than clicked together in a console, with the cost model settled while it is still on paper. The other half of the purchase is who operates it on day 31, and that is agreed before the build starts.Cloud infrastructure developmentOr book a meeting |
| DevOps consulting | Releases are the constraintA rebuilt release path in your own repositories and cloud accounts: pipelines, infrastructure as code, monitoring, and security checks that run on every change. It opens by writing down the four DORA numbers you have today, so what follows is judged against your own starting point.DevOps consultingOr book a meeting |
03Fit
Four times we would talk you out of the migration
Cloud is the category where the default answer and the right answer diverge most often. The first row below ends with us telling you to stay on the hardware you already own.
| Your situation | What we recommend instead |
|---|---|
| Predictable load, owned hardware, and it works | Do not moveCloud is priced for elasticity. A steady workload on paid-for hardware is one of the few cases where the total cost genuinely goes up. Move it when the hardware refresh comes due, not because of the year. |
| A bill that grew, and no one has looked at right-sizing | Not a migrationDo the settings work first. Right-sizing, committed capacity and switching off orphaned volumes change the bill without changing the architecture, and there is a fixed-scope version of exactly that read in the cloud cost and AI-readiness audit. Re-architecting before it is optimising a shape you have not measured. |
| A monolith that a vendor wants to break into microservices | Not yetMicroservices trade a code problem for a distributed-systems problem, and the second needs a team that can operate it. Move it as it is, get the operational practice working, then split what the load actually demands. |
| Nobody internally will own the platform afterwards | Settle that firstAn unowned cloud estate drifts back toward the bill it started with. Either name the owner or buy the ownership as infrastructure work or maintenance. Do not migrate into a vacuum. |
| Growth is real and the current setup cannot follow it | Move, in sequenceThe clearest yes in this table. Migration planned so the cutover is boring: the business keeps running while the move happens, which is the entire craft. |
| Deploys are manual, rare and frightening | DevOps firstBefore anything else on this page. Release automation compounds: it makes every subsequent change cheaper, including the ones that bring the bill down. |
How we work
AWS and Azure, to whichever you already run, with AWS Certified Solutions Architects on the team. Cost work runs through three of the four services rather than sitting inside one of them. unicrew is ISO 27001:2022 and ISO 9001:2015 certified, renewed through a multi-stage audit with Quay Audit UK. Three engagement models: time and materials (billed hourly, quoted per project), fixed price (outcome based, quoted per project), and team extension (billed monthly per team member). There is no minimum engagement period, and most engagements start within two to four weeks.
04Order
When the bill, the move and the release are all true at once
Get a release working, read the estate, move or build once the destination has an owner, then tune against the first real bill. In that order each step makes the next one cheaper. Out of order, the same work gets done twice.
- Get a release workingIf shipping is manual, rare and dreaded, that is the constraint on everything after it, including the work that takes cost out. On a B2B CRM platform the team ships frequent updates through the CI/CD pipelines built during that engagement. From you: the repositories, and one person who can approve a change to how releases happen.You getA release path that runs on every commit
- Read the estate before committing budget to itA bill that grew faster than usage is a diagnosis problem before it is an architecture problem, and the read is a document rather than a project. It comes back ranked, so the first three things to do are obvious. From you: read access to billing and architecture, and agreement on which accounts are in scope.You getA ranked plan your own engineers could execute
- Move or build only once the destination has an ownerAn estate nobody owns internally drifts back toward the bill it started with, whether it was moved there or built there. Settle it while the environment is still on paper: your own people, a team working inside your process, or the engineers who built it. From you: the name.You getA named owner for day 31, agreed before the build starts
- Tune against the first real billThe first month of real usage is the only honest sizing data that exists. Right-sizing and committed capacity get decided from it rather than from an estimate made before anything ran. From you: an hour to read that bill with us, and the call on what gets switched off.You getA right-sized estate with a cost baseline somebody reads
When somebody calls about a cloud bill, the request is usually to re-architect something. We ask to see the bill first, and most of the time the top three lines are an instance size nobody revisited after launch, a steady workload being paid for at the flexible rate, and environments from a project that finished. None of that is architecture. Fix it, then decide whether there is still a problem worth rebuilding for.
Andrii BurdaSenior Engineering Manager, unicrew05Proof
Three cloud engagements: one estate tuned, two moved
- SaaSAWS costs down 30%+ for a US B2B SaaS platformunicrew became the programming team for a B2B SaaS platform that had run for over a decade, streamlined how it used AWS and Heroku, and sped up rollouts.30%+Lower AWS costs
SaaSCloud Migration and DevOps Support for a B2B PlatformAzure migration and ongoing DevOps for a B2B CRM platform serving manufacturers and wholesale distributors.
HospitalityCloud Migration of Booking Platform for Hotels and Hotel NetworksA more cost-efficient, reliable, and scalable platform for hotel bookings, running on a modern containerized cloud stack.
06Clients
Five clients in their own words, one of them on the AWS bill
Artelogic has enabled us to develop and roll out products significantly faster than our previous service provider. The team has great knowledge of AWS and Heroku, which has helped us streamline and reduce costs. Artelogic has helped us reduce our AWS costs by 30% or more.
Up until a year and a half ago, I handled all the development and support of our application myself and I needed help. I brought in Artelogic, and it was one of the best business decisions I’ve ever made.
Artelogic helped us get the solution live, and our customer was happy. Project management was on our side, but the software development tasks were managed well. Communication was open, and Artelogic responded quickly. Even though there were some technically difficult tasks, the communication was good. The most important thing was Artelogic’s good communication.
Our business simply wouldn’t function without the Order Management system. We have made numerous functional and performance enhancements that has increased productivity and allowed us to maintain double digit growth without a substantial increase in staffing.
I’m consistently humbled by Artelogic’s performance. Projects of this caliber are hard to outsource. Teams come and go, and this type of work almost never gets done. They’ve kept their priorities straight as they’ve grown and always deliver.
07Questions
What teams ask before moving or tuning
AWS and Azure, across the whole path: consulting, migration, infrastructure and DevOps, with AWS Certified Solutions Architects on the team. The platform you already run is where we start.
Here is the evidence rather than a slogan. Patrick W., founder of a New York B2B SaaS company, credits us on Clutch with helping "reduce our AWS costs by 30% or more". How much is there depends entirely on your starting point, and nobody can name the number before reading the bill. For that read as a fixed-scope purchase rather than an engagement, there is the cloud cost and AI-readiness audit; for what cloud financial management is as a practice, we wrote about FinOps.
That is what the planning is for. On a B2B CRM platform, dependencies, data-integrity requirements and application configurations were mapped before anything moved, and the migration strategy was built around keeping disruption to a minimum; that move onto Microsoft Azure completed without significant issues. A UK hotel-booking platform reached near-zero downtime after its own migration, with faster transaction processing and reduced latency.
If deploys are manual, rare and frightening, start with DevOps whatever else is planned, because release automation makes every later change cheaper including the cost work. A migration without it moves the same painful release process to a more expensive address. Where both are needed, the release path first is the order that avoids doing the same work twice.
No. A migration price quoted before anyone has read your inventory is a guess with a decimal point, and the inventory is exactly where the surprises live. What can be said in advance: three engagement models, time and materials (billed hourly, quoted per project), fixed price (outcome based, quoted per project), and team extension (billed monthly per team member); there is no minimum engagement period; and most engagements start within two to four weeks.
What teams usually pair this with
All servicesSend us the bill, or the diagram
A recent cloud bill or an architecture diagram is enough for a first read. You get an engineer's view of what we would change, in what order, and what we would leave alone.