For everything that has to exist before a workload can land safely
Cloud Infrastructure Services
Every workload eventually lands on some foundation, whether or not anyone designed it deliberately. This practice builds that foundation first: the landing zone, the network boundary, the identity model and the infrastructure-as-code discipline that keeps all three reproducible instead of remembered.
How a landing zone decision actually gets made
Networking, identity boundaries and the infrastructure-as-code discipline underneath everything else.
90 secSample frame · video pending01Before the first workload lands
A foundation is cheap to get right early, expensive after
Skipping the foundation to ship the first workload faster usually means rebuilding it later with production already depending on it. Four questions decide the shape now.
Does the environment need to be rebuilt exactly, twice?
If a second environment must match the first precisely, infrastructure as code stops being optional and becomes the only reliable way to do it.
How many network boundaries does compliance actually require?
Some regulatory duties require strict segmentation between systems. That decides the network design before a single subnet gets drawn.
Who currently holds the keys to production?
Shared admin credentials with no audit trail are a governance risk that identity boundary work is built specifically to close.
What breaks first if the primary region goes down?
Naming the single point of failure honestly is what decides whether redundancy belongs in this phase or a later one.
| Manual configuration | Infrastructure as code | |
|---|---|---|
| Repeatability | Depends on memory and documentation | Defined once, applied consistently |
| Change review | Happens after the fact, if at all | Reviewed before it ever applies |
| Recovery speed | Slow, rebuilt by hand | Fast, redeployed from definition |
| Audit trail | Sparse, reconstructed after incidents | Complete, versioned alongside the code |
| Best for | One-off, throwaway environments | Anything meant to last or repeat |
02Agreed before build starts
The ledger that keeps foundation work honest
Every infrastructure engagement fixes what you bring, what changes, what returns, and what never moves out of your control regardless of the environment shape chosen.
- Your side
You bring
- The workloads expected to land on the foundation first
- Compliance duties the environment needs to satisfy
- Budget range and the timeline for the build
- Our side
We build
- A landing zone covering networking, identity and account structure
- Guardrails applied before any workload is allowed to deploy
- A repeatable pattern for provisioning the next environment
- Your side
You receive
- A landing zone ready to receive its first workload
- Documented guardrails your team can extend safely
- A provisioning template for every environment after this one
Never leaves you
- The cloud billing relationship and its contract terms
- Final approval over every guardrail and boundary
- Ownership of every workload that lands on the foundation
Where the line sitsWe build the foundation before anything sits on it, because a guardrail added after the first workload is a much harder retrofit.
03From landing zone to first safe workload
Four stages, each closing on something you can inspect
Foundation work drifts when boundary decisions get made informally after workloads already depend on them. This system ends every stage with something concrete enough to act on.
Model the landing zone
Account or subscription structure, environment split and guardrails are chosen against your actual compliance duties, not a generic template.
A landing zone with reasons attachedDefine networking and identity
Segmentation and access boundaries are designed against real traffic and admin patterns, not copied from a reference diagram.
Boundaries drawn before traffic flowsEncode the foundation as infrastructure
Networking, identity and account resources are defined in version control so the environment can be rebuilt from that definition alone.
The build captured as codeHand over the operating model
Runbooks, the provisioning pipeline and the review process move to your team, so the next environment does not require calling us.
A foundation your team can operate
04What actually drives the number
Four drivers, not a flat rate card
Infrastructure work is priced against the assessment, not a template, because these four factors change effort by multiples.
Number of environments and regions in scope
A single-region foundation is faster to design than one spanning several regions with independent failover requirements.
Networking and identity complexity
Flat networking with basic access control costs less to design than strict segmentation tied to federated identity.
Volume of manual configuration to encode
A small, well-documented environment is faster to codify than one built by several people over years with no records.
Existing tooling and pipeline gaps
An organisation with no review or deployment pipeline needs that built before infrastructure as code can even be enforced.
05Evidence and proof
Foundations nobody has to remember by hand.
Infrastructure proof here is an environment that rebuilds itself from its own definition. Every record waits for written client approval before production.
Explore case studiesA landing zone was live before the first workload ever deployed.
Aster North was about to ship its first production workload with no account structure or network boundary defined. A landing zone stood up guardrails ahead of that first deploy.
- Guardrails live before first deploy
- All of them
- Post-launch security exceptions filed
- Zero
A flat network became segmented without a single support ticket.
Koru Health's systems could all reach each other with no boundary between environments. A phased segmentation closed that gap while every clinical system stayed reachable throughout.
- Systems moved to segmented zones
- All in scope
- Reported access disruptions
- None
We can rebuild our entire environment from the repository now. That single fact changed how our team sleeps during an incident.
Sample · pending client approval
06Read this first
When foundation work is the wrong spend
Paying for a landing zone redesign when one team runs one workload in one region would cost more than it returns. The exits are marked before the pitch. When the work is justified, it runs against Terraform, cloud-native IAM, VPC or VNet networking and policy-as-code tooling.
A single environment already covers the need
One well-governed environment for one small team may already be enough. Landing zone structure solves a scale problem you may not have yet.
- Kubernetes practice
The gap is really about container orchestration
When the actual problem is running containers reliably rather than the account or network layer, the orchestration practice fits better.
- Hire Cloud Engineers
Your own engineers already run this well
If your team already owns the foundation and just needs more hands, hiring cloud engineers fits better than adding a delivery layer.
| Shape | Best when | You direct | We carry |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scoped build | The foundation model is settled | Priorities and rollout order | Landing zone or IaC delivery |
| Delivery pod | The model will evolve with learning | Product decisions each cycle | Engineering, quality, releases |
| Team extension | Your leads already run this well | Architecture and standards | Named engineers and continuity |
07Straight answers
Asked before a foundation gets poured.
01How is this different from a cloud migration engagement?
This practice builds the foundation a migration lands on: the landing zone, networking and identity. Migration then moves the actual workloads onto that foundation, and the two are usually sequenced together.
02Do you work across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud equally?
Yes, the landing zone and infrastructure-as-code discipline apply on any of the three, with provider-specific tooling swapped underneath. The governance model itself does not change with the provider.
03What infrastructure-as-code tools do you use?
Terraform most commonly, alongside provider-native options where a team already standardised on one. The choice follows your existing tooling and skills rather than a fixed default.
04Can you take over an environment another team built manually?
Yes, starting with an assessment of what exists today rather than a rebuild pitch. Encoding an existing environment into code is common and often cheaper than starting fresh.
05What does infrastructure work cost?
Scoped engagements are priced against environment count, network complexity and how much manual configuration needs encoding. Delivery after that runs on a monthly commitment sized to the roadmap ahead.
06Do you handle disaster recovery and failover as part of this?
Where the assessment shows a genuine single point of failure, yes. Redundancy is scoped against actual risk rather than added everywhere by default regardless of need.
07Is this only relevant for large, complex environments?
No. A small environment benefits from a documented foundation just as much, since the cost of an undocumented environment shows up at the worst possible moment either way.