The services on offer, and the architecture patterns underneath them —
from physical builds to private AI, with one identity surface and central
logging tying it together.
Services
Six core practice areas — from running cable and racking servers up to
shipping custom software and standing up private on-prem AI. Engagements are
scoped individually or bundled into a longer-running consulting retainer.
Infrastructure & Networking
Hands-on physical and network builds: cabling, racks, firewalls, on-prem
servers, and wireless point-to-point bridges between sites.
Oversee or personally run structured cabling, server-rack builds, patch panels, UPS, and PDU work.
Provision and harden hardware firewalls — pfSense, WatchGuard, SonicWall — with sane ACLs, IDS/IPS, and reporting.
Design L2/L3 switching, VLAN segmentation, QoS, and inter-VLAN routing for offices, server rooms, and DMZs.
Stand up wireless point-to-point bridges and backhauls (TP-Link CPE710-class radios) for branch links, warehouse extensions, and post-acquisition site stand-ups.
Build dedicated backup servers and snapshot-based recovery for both Windows and Linux workloads.
Site-to-site VPN topologies (WireGuard, IPsec) and SD-WAN-style routing for multi-site organizations.
Build & Operate
Cloud & Hybrid
Azure, AWS, and on-prem working as one estate — with clustered VMs,
identity sync, and SaaS deployed where it actually pays off.
Azure: VMs, Virtual Networks, Entra ID, Intune, Microsoft Defender, M365 / SharePoint Online, and Purview for governance.
AWS: EC2, S3, IAM, VPC peering, Route 53, and CloudWatch — sized for actual load, not "just spin up a t3.large".
Clustered virtualization on Hyper-V or KVM/Proxmox, including HA, live migration, and replication to a secondary site.
Hybrid identity: AD DS ↔ Entra ID, SSO, conditional access, and seamless user experience across on-prem and cloud.
Workload placement decisions backed by real cost and performance modelling — not just defaulting to "everything to cloud".
Hybrid networking: ExpressRoute, S2S VPN, public IP gateway designs, and split-horizon DNS that survives a cloud outage.
Cloud & On-Prem
Security & Access
Practical defense-in-depth: zero-trust-style access, MFA, hardened
baselines, and central logging that someone actually reads.
Firewall policies tuned to real traffic, with VPN + MFA as the only inbound path to internal resources.
Mandatory MFA / 2FA on VPN, RDP, admin tooling, and cloud sign-ins (Microsoft Authenticator, Duo, hardware tokens).
Least-privilege identity design across AD DS, Entra ID, and SaaS — Tier-0 separation for admin accounts, no daily-driver Domain Admins.
Endpoint hardening with Intune / GPO baselines, full-disk encryption, app control, and least-privilege local accounts.
Central logging and alerting: SSH, VPN, firewall, AD sign-ins, web servers — feeding a dashboard or SIEM-lite the team will actually look at.
Security assessments and roadmaps tailored to your real risk profile, not a generic checklist that ignores how the business operates.
Defense-in-Depth
Software & SaaS Development
Custom web apps, internal tools, and SaaS products — built on a classic
LAMP stack or a modern web framework, hosted where it makes sense.
Custom web apps and internal tools: PHP / LAMP, Python, Node/Express — chosen for fit, not fashion.
Front-controller / MVC layouts so apps stay maintainable without framework lock-in.
SaaS-style products billed per seat or by retainer, including auth, billing, and admin surfaces.
ERP / CRM integration — Dynamics, Salesforce, SharePoint, Power Platform, plus self-hosted suites — wired into custom workflows and dashboards.
Database design and operations: MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MSSQL — with backups, point-in-time recovery, and schema migration discipline.
Secure delivery: hardened TLS, sane HTTP headers, CSP, audit logging, and least-privilege service accounts as defaults.
Apps & Integrations
DevOps & Automation
IaC-style configs, CI/CD pipelines, and scripting that turns
long-and-error-prone tasks into one repeatable command.
Infrastructure-as-code mindset — git-versioned configs for nginx/Apache, firewall rules, and provisioning scripts.
CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins) for build, test, deploy, and rollback paths.
Bash, PowerShell, and Python automation for backups, health checks, log rotation, certificate renewal, and post-migration cleanup.
Power Automate for business workflows: approvals, notifications, document routing, and lifecycle tasks across M365.
Onboarding / offboarding flows that drive AD, Entra ID, Intune, Exchange Online, and SaaS provisioning from a single trigger.
Monitoring and alerting (Grafana / Prometheus / Zabbix / native cloud) with thresholds tuned to actual workload behaviour.
Repeatable Ops
AI & Private LLMs
On-prem private LLMs, agentic workflows, and AI woven into ERP / CRM —
with the data and compute staying inside your network.
Stand up on-prem private LLMs on dedicated GPU servers (Ollama, vLLM, llama.cpp) so sensitive data never leaves the network.
Cost angle that matters: a single capable server hosting a private LLM is often cheaper than a stack of $200-per-seat AI subscriptions, with full data sovereignty as a bonus.
Agentic AI workflows — Claude Code, MCP servers, and custom orchestrators — wired into existing tooling for code, ops, and back-office tasks.
Retrieval-augmented assistants over your real data: SharePoint libraries, file shares, ticket histories, code repos, and internal wikis.
ERP / CRM integration so AI surfaces sit on top of the systems your business already runs in — Dynamics, Salesforce, SharePoint, line-of-business apps.
Guardrails, audit logging, and access controls so AI use is traceable and aligned with the same policies as the rest of the stack.
Private & Practical
Architecture
How environments are designed under the hood — from the patch panel to the
private LLM. Six layers, each built on simple, hardened building blocks and
configuration kept under version control.
Physical & Network
The layer most teams ignore until it bites: cabling, racks, firewalls,
switching, and wireless P2P bridges done properly.
Structured cabling, rack builds, patch panels, UPS, and PDU layouts oversaw or executed personally.
Hardware firewalls (pfSense, WatchGuard, SonicWall) configured with sane ACLs, IDS/IPS, and reporting wired into central logging.
L2/L3 switching, VLAN segmentation, and inter-VLAN routing — separate networks for servers, users, IoT/cameras, and guests.
Wireless point-to-point bridges and backhauls (TP-Link CPE710-class radios) for branch links, warehouse extensions, and acquisition stand-ups.
Site-to-site VPN topologies (WireGuard, IPsec) with health monitoring and failover.
DNS, DHCP, NTP, and SNMP — boring, foundational, and built to be observable.
Compute & Storage
Clustered VMs, on-prem servers, and cloud workloads designed as one
estate — with SMB, iSCSI, and S3-compatible storage where each fits.
Hypervisor stacks: Hyper-V, VMware, KVM/Proxmox — clustered with HA, live migration, and replication to a secondary site.
Windows Server roles (AD DS, DNS/DHCP, IIS, file/print, ADFS) and Linux servers (Ubuntu, RHEL/Fedora) running side-by-side.
Cloud compute — Azure VMs and AWS EC2 — sized for actual load, with autoscale only where the workload genuinely benefits.
Storage layouts: SMB shares, iSCSI targets, NFS, and S3-compatible object storage — chosen for the workload, not the vendor.
Dedicated backup servers (Veeam-class or scripted snapshot pipelines) with offline copies and tested restore drills.
Database tiers across MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and MSSQL with backups, replication, and migration discipline.
Identity & Access
One identity surface across on-prem and cloud, with MFA, conditional
access, and Tier-0 separation as the defaults.
Centralized identity via AD DS / Entra ID — policies, groups, and MFA flow through to servers, SaaS, and VPN endpoints from one place.
Conditional access and Tier-0 separation: admin accounts isolated from daily-driver accounts; PAW-style admin workstations where appropriate.
SSH key-only authentication for Linux servers, with role-based admin accounts and no password logins.
WireGuard / IPsec VPNs for remote desktop, SSH, and SMB traffic — services kept off the public internet by default.
Mandatory MFA for VPN, RDP, admin tooling, and cloud sign-ins (Microsoft Authenticator, Duo, hardware tokens).
Sign-in and admin-action logging fed into central monitoring so suspicious access patterns surface fast.
Data & Applications
Custom web apps, internal tools, and ERP / CRM integrations on top of
databases that are backed up, encrypted, and operated like production.
Apache or nginx fronting PHP, Python, and Node services — front-controller / MVC layouts, no framework lock-in.
Hardened TLS, HSTS, CSP, and sane HTTP-header / cookie defaults baked into every site.
Application data stored in encrypted databases on-prem or in cloud, with backups and point-in-time recovery configured per workload.
ERP / CRM integration — Dynamics, Salesforce, SharePoint, Power Platform — wired together via REST APIs, queues, and Power Automate.
Internal tools and dashboards that replace spreadsheet-based processes for finance, ops, and HR.
Reverse-proxy designs (nginx, Cloudflare) for safe public exposure of internal services where needed.
Operations
Configuration as code, CI/CD pipelines, scripted ops, and monitoring
that catches problems before users do.
Git-versioned configuration: nginx/Apache vhosts, firewall rules, IaC templates, and automation scripts live in source control.
CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins) for build, test, deploy, and rollback paths on apps and infrastructure changes.
Bash, PowerShell, and Python automation for backups, health checks, log rotation, certificate renewal, and post-migration cleanup.
Power Automate for business workflows: approvals, notifications, document routing, and lifecycle tasks across M365.
Onboarding / offboarding flows that drive AD, Entra ID, Intune, Exchange Online, and SaaS provisioning from a single trigger.
Monitoring (Grafana / Prometheus / Zabbix / native cloud) with alerting tuned to actual workload behaviour, not just defaults.
AI Layer
On-prem private LLMs, agentic workflows, and AI assistants grounded in
real company data — with the compute and prompts staying inside your
network.
Private LLMs hosted on dedicated GPU servers (Ollama, vLLM, llama.cpp) behind a hardened reverse proxy and IdP-backed auth.
Cost angle: a single capable server can serve a 30+ person org for less than the equivalent stack of $200-per-seat AI subscriptions — with full data sovereignty.
Retrieval-augmented assistants pointed at SharePoint libraries, file shares, ticket history, code repos, and internal wikis.
Agentic workflows — Claude Code, MCP servers, custom orchestrators — wired into ops, code, and back-office tasks.
ERP / CRM integration so AI surfaces sit on top of existing systems, not in a side-quest portal nobody opens.
Audit logging, rate limits, and access policies aligned with the rest of the stack — AI usage is observable and reviewable.