Azure Consulting Services

PS3G provides Azure consulting services for organizations that run on Microsoft technology and want their cloud to match: a founder who is building a .NET product and wants it on Azure from the first commit, a growing company with servers in a closet and Microsoft 365 in the cloud, and an IT director inside a larger organization with a data center lease ending and a portfolio of .NET and SQL Server applications to move. We design the landing zone, migrate the workloads, build and modernize the applications, secure the estate and, if you want, run it afterwards.

Azure Consulting Services: what we build and for whom

Azure is the natural cloud for a Microsoft-centered organization because identity, licensing, developer tooling and the application platform line up: Entra ID is already your directory, Visual Studio and GitHub deploy to it directly, and SQL Server and .NET have first-class managed homes there. Our microsoft azure consulting work falls into four groups.

• Foundations. A landing zone with subscriptions, networking, identity, policy, logging and cost management set up before the first workload arrives, so the estate does not have to be re-plumbed later.
• Migration. Moving servers, databases and applications from on-premises or another cloud into Azure, choosing for each one between rehosting, replatforming onto a managed service and refactoring. The method is on our cloud migration page.
• Application development and modernization. Building new applications on Azure’s platform services and moving older .NET applications onto App Service, containers or functions with managed databases, which is where our .NET development practice does most of its cloud work.
• Security, governance and operations. Identity and access, policy, threat detection, backup and recovery, cost reviews and day-to-day management under defined SLAs.

Azure is not always the right cloud, and we say so. If your data platform is built on BigQuery, your team is AWS-native, or a key vendor only runs elsewhere, forcing Azure creates cost without benefit. We work on all three major clouds and give a vendor-neutral recommendation in the assessment; the overview is on our cloud solutions page.

What the service covers

The table lists the typical work an azure consultant from PS3G does and the Azure services involved. Service names change over time; we use the current equivalents.

Type of work	What it looks like	Azure services typically involved
Landing zone and governance	Management groups, subscriptions, hub-and-spoke or virtual WAN networking, naming and tagging, policy, logging, budgets	Azure Policy, Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Cost Management, Bicep or Terraform
Azure migration services	Discovery and dependency mapping, wave planning, server and database migration, cutover and validation	Azure Migrate, Azure Database Migration Service, Virtual Machines, Azure SQL, Azure Files
Azure development services	Web applications and APIs, background processing, event-driven integration, identity integration	App Service, Azure Functions, Azure Container Apps, AKS, Service Bus, Event Grid, Entra ID, Key Vault
Data	Managed databases, data platforms, reporting	Azure SQL, Cosmos DB, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Data Factory, Synapse or Fabric, Power BI
Security and identity	Conditional access, privileged identity, secrets, network security, threat detection, compliance baselines	Entra ID, Defender for Cloud, Microsoft Sentinel, Key Vault, Private Link, Firewall
DevOps	Pipelines, infrastructure as code, environments, release approvals	Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions, Bicep or Terraform, Azure Container Registry
Azure managed services	Monitoring, patching, backup and recovery testing, cost reviews, incident response under defined SLAs	Azure Monitor, Azure Backup, Site Recovery, Update Manager, Advisor

How we work

Cloud projects fail on sequencing more than on technology: workloads move before the foundation exists, or the foundation is so elaborate that nothing moves. Our process keeps both in balance.

1. Assessment. An inventory of applications, servers, databases, integrations and licenses; a dependency map; the identity and security requirements; a target-state proposal with a cost estimate from Azure’s own pricing tools for the workloads in scope.
2. Landing zone. The foundation deployed as code, with identity, networking, policy, logging and budgets, reviewed with your security lead before any workload lands.
3. Pilot wave. One or two low-risk workloads migrated or deployed end to end, with the runbook, the monitoring and the rollback tested for real.
4. Waves and builds. Migration waves grouped by dependency, and application work in two-week increments, each with a demo and a written cutover plan where production is affected.
5. Operate or hand over. Documentation, a cost baseline, backup and recovery tests, then handover to your team or an azure managed services agreement with defined SLAs.

Team and stack choices

A lead architect in the United States owns the design and your weekly conversation; cloud and .NET engineers at our India delivery center carry out the migration waves and builds with overlapping hours; a security engineer reviews the landing zone and each wave. Everything we deploy is infrastructure as code in your repositories and your subscriptions, so nothing about your estate lives only in our heads. Our engineers hold Microsoft certifications, and we use the Azure architecture guidance Microsoft publishes as the reference for our designs.

Ask for an Azure assessment and we will come back with a written proposal.

Where this fits with the rest of your systems

Azure cloud services are rarely the whole picture. Most organizations we work with keep some systems on-premises for a while, use Microsoft 365 and Dynamics or another SaaS suite, and have a line-of-business estate that is mostly .NET with some Java, PHP or Python at the edges. Our designs assume that mix.

Because PS3G’s core engineering practice is .NET and the Microsoft stack, Azure consulting and application work are usually the same team. That matters when a migration turns out to need code changes, which it usually does: connection strings and file shares become managed services, Windows authentication becomes Entra ID, scheduled tasks become functions, and the application is better for it. Our Microsoft technology services page covers the wider Microsoft estate, including SQL Server, Dynamics, SharePoint and the Power Platform, which often move to Azure together.

Hybrid is normal. Azure Arc, site-to-site networking and a single identity plane let on-premises systems and Azure workloads coexist for as long as the business needs, and the landing zone is designed for that from the start rather than treating hybrid as a temporary state.

Examples by organization size

These are typical engagement shapes, not named clients.

• A founder building on .NET. A fixed-scope engagement that sets up a small, well-governed Azure environment with App Service, Azure SQL, Key Vault, a pipeline and cost alerts, so the product starts on a foundation that will not need rebuilding at the next funding round.
• A growing company leaving the server closet. A migration of file servers, a line-of-business application and its SQL Server database into Azure over a few waves, with Entra ID replacing the old domain, backups tested and a managed-services agreement afterwards so nobody in-house has to become a cloud administrator.
• An IT department inside a larger organization. A landing zone aligned to the organization’s security and compliance standards, a migration program for a portfolio of .NET applications with wave planning and change control, modernization of the applications that justify it, and operations handed to the internal cloud team with documented runbooks.

Engagement models

• Fixed-scope project: a defined deliverable and price for a landing zone, a migration wave or an application build.
• Dedicated team or staff augmentation: Azure architects and engineers inside your team on a monthly basis.
• Managed services: we monitor, patch, back up, secure and cost-manage your Azure estate under defined SLAs.
• Advisory: an Azure assessment, an architecture or cost review, or fractional cloud leadership.

How we start: a first conversation, a short assessment, a written proposal.

Why PS3G for Azure work

We have built and run software for more than a decade from Wilmington, Delaware and our India delivery center, with Microsoft-certified engineers across .NET, SQL Server and Azure. We build and run our own products, so we manage cloud cost, uptime and security for ourselves every day, not only for clients. Our .NET, DevOps and security practices sit on the same teams as our Azure consultants, which is why migrations that need code changes do not stall.

Related services

• All services: everything we build, test, run and advise on.
• Cloud solutions: our vendor-neutral view across Azure, AWS and Google Cloud.
• Cloud migration: the method we use for every migration, whichever cloud.
• .NET development: the applications most of our Azure work supports.
• Microsoft technology services: SQL Server, Dynamics, SharePoint and the Power Platform alongside Azure.

Frequently asked questions

What do your Azure consulting services include?

Landing-zone design and deployment, migration of servers, databases and applications into Azure, development and modernization of applications on Azure platform services, security and identity work, DevOps pipelines and infrastructure as code, and ongoing management under defined SLAs. Each is available as a fixed-scope project, staff augmentation, a managed service or an assessment.

Are you a Microsoft partner?

We do not make partner-status claims on this site. What we can show is more than a decade of building and running .NET and SQL Server systems, Microsoft-certified engineers on our teams, our own products in production, and Azure designs that follow Microsoft’s published architecture guidance. Ask us for references for work similar to yours during the assessment.

How do you approach an Azure migration?

Inventory and dependency mapping first, then a target state and cost estimate, then a landing zone deployed as code, then a pilot wave to prove the runbook, then migration waves grouped by dependency with tested rollback. Each workload gets a deliberate choice between rehosting, replatforming onto a managed service and refactoring, and the application team is involved because most migrations need some code changes.

Can you reduce our Azure bill?

Usually there is room, and we start with a cost review rather than a promise. Common findings are oversized virtual machines, non-production environments running around the clock, unattached disks, storage on the wrong tier, and workloads that would cost less on a platform service than on a server. We fix what is safe, schedule the rest, and leave budgets and alerts in place so costs stay visible.

Can Azure work alongside our on-premises systems?

Yes, and most organizations run hybrid for a long time. A site-to-site connection or ExpressRoute, a single identity plane through Entra ID, and Azure Arc for managing on-premises servers let the two sides coexist. We design the landing zone for hybrid from the start, so the systems that stay on-premises are a plan rather than a leftover.