Engagement 13 · Monthly Retainer
Your on-demand cloud architect. Continuous monitoring, incident response, advisory, and platform improvements for your Azure environment, Terraform codebase, and pipelines — at a monthly cost that's predictable.
Why this exists
A landing zone gets built, pipelines get wired up, and then the day-to-day reality kicks in: drift creeps back, costs need watching, security baselines need maintaining, an incident at 2am needs a real expert. Hiring a senior platform engineer is the right move when you have the workload to justify it. Until then, this retainer gives you the same expertise on demand — without the headcount.
What's included
Health checks against your Azure environment, Terraform state, and pipelines. Anomalies surfaced before they become incidents.
On-call coverage during agreed hours. We get on the bridge with your team and help drive resolution. Post-incident review included.
Async and live access for design questions, code review, and "is this approach sane?" sanity checks. The senior voice in the room when you need one.
A monthly retrospective on the platform. What's drifting, what's getting expensive, what should we improve next. Ranked backlog, your call on priority.
Routine sweeps for configuration drift, idle resources, missing tags, security regressions. Findings reported, fixes available within retainer hours.
A deeper look every 90 days — roadmap alignment, security baseline, DR readiness, FinOps health. Course-correct before things drift too far.
How it works
Tier choice can change month to month. No annual lock-in. Pause when you don't need it.
Onboarding
Read-only access, environment walkthrough, runbook handover, alert routing, and on-call paths set up.
Initial drift and cost sweep, baseline report, agreed cadence for monthly reviews and quarterly deep-dives.
The retainer runs. Monthly review, quarterly deep-dive, ad-hoc support against the agreed hours.
FAQ
Can we start a retainer without doing a project first?
Yes, but we usually do a short initial engagement first — typically Azure Audit & Drift Control — so we both have a clear picture of the environment before committing to ongoing work.
What about 24/7 on-call?
The Embedded tier covers business-hours on-call. True 24/7 coverage isn't the right shape for a small consultancy and we won't pretend otherwise — for that, you want a managed service provider with a follow-the-sun rota.
Do unused hours roll over?
Up to 50% of unused hours roll over to the next month. After that they expire — the retainer is for ongoing engagement, not stockpiling.
What if we need more than the retainer covers?
Either upgrade the tier for a month, or scope a specific engagement (e.g. CI/CD Setup, Security Posture) on top. We're transparent about what fits where.
Can we cancel?
One month notice. No long contracts, no penalties. The retainer should earn its place every month.
Next step
Book a 30-minute discovery call. We'll talk through your platform, what's been built, and what kind of ongoing support actually fits.
Often paired with