Consulting Services
The Platform Foundation Review
A fixed-scope, 4-week architecture engagement for startups building on Azure. You walk away knowing exactly what risks your platform carries, what it will cost you at scale, and how to fix it — with the code to do so.
Why This Exists
Diagnostic depth meets pattern recognition.
PAA is AI-powered and comprehensive — it scans your entire Azure environment against 700+ security, reliability, and cost checks derived from Microsoft's Well-Architected Framework. It surfaces what's there.
But knowing what's there is only half the answer. You need someone who has seen these patterns across thousands of architectures — who knows which findings are urgent, which are noise, and what your platform needs to look like at 10x your current load.
That's the engagement. PAA provides the depth. A decade of Microsoft startup experience provides the judgement. Together they deliver something neither a tool nor a generic consultant can match.
Crimson Owl Technologies
Built on 10 years at Microsoft for Startups
10
Years at Microsoft for Startups
1000s
Startup architectures reviewed
700+
Automated checks via PAA
4
Weeks to complete clarity
Who It's For
Built for founders who moved fast and know it
This engagement is right for you if any of these are true.
You're approaching your first scaling milestone
10x users, first enterprise customer, or a Series A that will bring technical due diligence. You need to know what breaks before they find out.
Your founding CTO is deep in product
Nobody is watching the platform. Features ship, infrastructure decisions pile up, and the architectural debt is accumulating silently.
You need evidence, not opinions
Investors, enterprise customers, and new technical hires all want to see documented platform health. You need something you can put in front of them.
You can't justify a €15,000 consultant
Traditional architecture reviews cost €10,000–25,000 and take a month to start. You need the same depth at a price that doesn't require board approval.
The Engagement
4 weeks. Fixed scope. No surprises.
Every engagement follows the same structure. You know what happens each week, what you'll receive at the end, and what it costs before we start.
Environment Inventory
PAA connects to your Azure environment via read-only access and runs a full scan across security, reliability, cost, operational excellence, and performance. 700+ automated checks surface the complete picture of your current state.
Findings Review
We work through the findings together. Not every finding is equal — some are urgent, some are noise, some are architectural decisions you made deliberately. This session separates the critical from the cosmetic and gives each risk a business impact, not just a severity score.
Capacity Planning
Where does your platform break? We model your architecture against 10x your current load and identify the specific bottlenecks — database connection limits, compute ceiling, storage throughput, network topology — that will stop your growth before you see them coming.
Remediation Roadmap
A prioritised plan your engineering team can act on immediately. Critical findings come with ready-to-deploy Terraform and Bicep code generated by PAA. The roadmap is structured by impact and effort — so you fix what matters most first.
What You Walk Away With
Everything documented. Nothing left to memory.
Every deliverable is structured so your team can act on it without us in the room. The work doesn't live in a slide deck — it lives in your GitHub.
- PAA Assessment Report — Full findings across all WAF pillars, severity-rated, compliance-mapped, with evidence.
- Architecture Diagram — Current state and target state diagrams your team and investors can read.
- Prioritised Risk Register — Every finding with business impact, effort estimate, and recommended owner.
- Capacity Planning Document — Your platform modelled against 10x load — where it holds, where it breaks.
- Remediation Roadmap — A sprint-ready backlog with IaC starter code for critical findings.
- GitHub Sync (optional) — All findings and the roadmap synced to your repository via PAA.
Pricing
Fixed price. Excl. VAT. No hourly surprises.
30 minutes. No commitment. We'll confirm fit before anything is signed.
After the Engagement
The work doesn't stop at week 4.
Your architecture changes every sprint. New services, new dependencies, new risks. After the Platform Foundation Review, PAA stays on — continuously monitoring your environment against the same standards we used in the engagement.
Clients who continue with a PAA subscription get a team tier included for the first month, with direct access to our team for the first 30 days post-engagement.
Continuous WAF monitoring
700+ checks running against your live environment
New findings as you ship
Every new resource assessed against the same standards
WAF score tracking over time
Prove architectural improvement to your board and investors
Common Questions
Do we need to prepare anything before the engagement starts?
No. Setup takes about 20 minutes — you grant PAA read-only access to your Azure subscriptions via Entra ID, and we're ready to scan. PAA never modifies your environment.
We're pre-revenue. Is €4,500 realistic for us?
It depends on what a scaling incident or a failed investor due diligence would cost you. For most startups approaching their first meaningful growth milestone, €4,500 is the right trade. If timing is an issue, reach out — we can discuss options.
What if we're not on Azure?
The Platform Foundation Review is Azure-native. PAA also supports AWS and GCP scanning at Business tier and above — reach out to discuss if you're running a multi-cloud environment.
Is this a one-time engagement or ongoing?
The Platform Foundation Review is a one-time fixed engagement. Most clients continue with a PAA subscription afterwards for continuous monitoring. There's no obligation to do so.
Know what your platform carries before your users find out.
30-minute discovery call. We confirm fit, answer your questions, and agree a start date. No commitment until you're ready.
Typically 2–3 week lead time from discovery call to engagement start.
