Microsoft Azure Consulting Services for Secure Cloud Foundations
Updated
Build, Modernize, and Scale with Azure Cloud
Sthenos helps businesses unlock the full value of Azure by combining cloud architecture, AI engineering, and platform modernization into a single, execution-focused approach. We design and deliver Azure solutions that improve performance, reduce complexity, and support long-term growth.
From migrating legacy workloads and optimizing cloud infrastructure to enabling AI-driven automation and secure data platforms, our Azure engineers work to turn your cloud strategy into business outcomes—at scale, without disruption.
End-to-End Azure Services for Modern Enterprises
Azure OpenAI Services
Azure Machine Learning
Azure AI Bot Services
Computer Vision
Azure Security Center
Azure Monitor & Log Analytics
Azure Database Migration Service
Azure SQL Database
Power BI Dashboards
Azure Data Factory
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Azure VMware Solution (AVS)
Azure Cognitive Services (Foundry Tools)
Virtual Machines (VMs)
Virtual Network (VNet)
Delivering Measurable Business Outcomes with Azure
Cloud migration & modernization
We move enterprise workloads to Azure with precision. From assessment to execution, Sthenos modernizes legacy environments while improving performance, strengthening security, and controlling cloud spend.
Application development & deployment
Sthenos builds and deploys cloud-native applications on Azure using scalable architectures, containers, and microservices—designed for resilience, faster releases, and long-term maintainability.
Data & analytics solutions
We unify fragmented data estates on Azure to enable real-time insights. Our solutions span data engineering, analytics, and visualization—turning raw data into actionable intelligence.
AI & machine learning integration
Sthenos integrates Azure OpenAI, Azure Machine Learning, and Cognitive Services to embed intelligence into business processes, enabling smarter automation and data-driven decision-making.
Infrastructure optimization
We continuously optimize Azure environments through rightsizing, automation, and performance tuning—ensuring reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency across compute, storage, and networking.
DevOps & automation
Our DevOps practices accelerate delivery using Azure DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code—reducing deployment risk while improving collaboration and release velocity.
Security & compliance
Security is embedded from day one. We implement Azure-native security, identity, and governance frameworks to protect workloads, enforce compliance, and support Zero Trust strategies at scale.
Custom AI Solutions Designed For Measurable Business Outcomes
Solving IT Challenges In Every Industry, Every Day.
Why Enterprises Choose Sthenos for Azure Solutions
Enterprise-Scale Azure Transformation
We offer Azure modernization services for enterprise workloads, with a focus on reliability, performance, and long-term scalability.
End-to-End Azure Capability
From cloud strategy and migration to optimization, security, and managed services, Sthenos delivers full-lifecycle Azure support aligned to evolving business and technology needs.
Azure-Native and AI-Ready Architectures
Our teams design Azure-native platforms built for automation, analytics, and AI—enabling faster innovation while maintaining enterprise-grade governance and compliance.
Outcome-Focused Engineering
Every Azure engagement is tied to measurable business goals, including cost optimization, operational efficiency, improved resilience, and faster time-to-market.
Human-Centered, Business-Led Design
We build Azure solutions around real users and business workflows, ensuring technology adoption is practical, scalable, and aligned with how teams work.
Clients of NeoSOFT
Azure consulting at Sthenos means architecting, modernizing and operating Azure environments built for performance, security and long-term scale, from cloud migration to cloud-native engineering and AI-ready platforms. This section groups the fifteen Azure services on this page, defines the Azure terms they rest on at Microsoft's own documentation, and sets out how an Azure migration runs, what it produces, what it costs and what to ask any Microsoft Azure consultancy, us included.
From Azure OpenAI Services to Virtual Network, grouped in Figure 1.
The typical band published on our cloud consulting page.
Depending on the seniority and mix of the team, published sitewide.
The repository and the cloud accounts are in your name.
On this page
- Azure consulting services, grouped by what they do
- The Azure terms behind the services, defined at Microsoft
- How an Azure migration runs
- Azure VMware Solution or cloud-native
- What it costs, and what moves the number
- What you get from an Azure engagement
- What to ask Azure consultants before you hire
- Frequently asked questions
- Related pages
Azure consulting services, grouped by what they do
The fifteen Azure services on this page fall into four groups: AI and machine learning, data, compute and containers, and the network, security and operations layer every workload depends on.
Figure 1. The fifteen Azure services on this page, by what they do
Every box is a service card on this page, named in its own words. The grouping is for reading; nothing in the figure is counted or measured.
Each group is carried in more depth elsewhere on this site: AI on our artificial intelligence and machine learning page, data on our big data and analytics page, containers and pipelines on our DevOps services page, and the wider Microsoft stack on our Microsoft services page.
The Azure terms behind the services, defined at Microsoft
Four of the services above carry most of the architecture decisions. The definitions below are Microsoft's own, linked so you can read the source rather than take ours.
Azure security terms: Zero Trust and Defender for Cloud, defined at Microsoft
This page commits to Azure-native security, identity and governance frameworks that protect workloads, enforce compliance and support Zero Trust strategies at scale. Microsoft defines the term in its Zero Trust overview: "Zero Trust is a modern security approach based on a simple idea: never trust, always verify." Microsoft builds it on three principles, quoted below.
"Every access request is authenticated and authorized using all available signals."
"User and workloads get only the access they need, for the shortest time required."
"Security controls are designed with the expectation that attackers might be operating inside the environment."
Microsoft now describes Defender for Cloud as "a Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP)" (Microsoft Learn).
How an Azure migration runs
A migration is a sequence with a decision at the end of each phase. The phases below are the order we work in, set out in full on our cloud migration and optimization page.
- AssessA workload inventory with dependencies and a risk rating per workload.
- PlanA migration plan with waves, a target architecture and a landing zone design.
- PilotA tested runbook and a set of corrections to the plan.
- Migrate in wavesThe workloads themselves, plus a cutover record per wave.
- ValidateFunctional, performance, restore and security checks against the agreed criteria.
- Optimise and operateRightsizing, lifecycling and scheduling, then the operating model and the runbooks.
Azure VMware Solution or cloud-native: which suits the workload
This page offers two routes for an existing application, each described in its own words below.
Azure VMware Solution or cloud-native on Azure
Azure VMware Solution (AVS)
Right when the goal is cloud adoption without refactoring- Extends existing VMware workloads to Azure with native compatibility
- Legacy applications move without refactoring
- Microsoft: private clouds of VMware vSphere clusters on dedicated bare-metal Azure infrastructure
Cloud-native on Azure
Right when resilience, faster releases and maintainability are the goal- Scalable architectures, containers and microservices
- Containerized applications on Azure Kubernetes Service
- Azure DevOps, CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code
What it costs, and what moves the number
A cloud assessment and roadmap is priced by the number of workloads and how much of the estate has to be inventoried, as our cloud consulting page explains. Migration is priced by workload count and complexity, and ongoing optimisation is usually a retainer. For the data services on this page, our big data page publishes $40,000 to $150,000 for a first warehouse and reporting layer, depending on how many source systems have to be connected.
Figure 2. The published bands, on one scale
Bar widths are proportional to the published figures. Sources: our cloud consulting, big data and analytics and about us pages. None of them is a quote for your estate.
| Driver | Why it moves the number |
|---|---|
| How many workloads are in scope | And how many of them nobody currently owns. |
| How coupled they are | A system with documented interfaces moves quickly. One where a scheduled job on a forgotten server writes to a share that three other systems read does not. |
| How much downtime the business will accept | A narrow window buys rehearsal, tooling and out of hours work. |
| Which framework your contract names | The evidence and the review cycles are work in their own right. |
Figure 3. The published rate band
Source: the rate published sitewide and on our about us page, depending on the seniority and mix of the team. Where the scope is clear we quote a fixed price for a defined outcome.
What you get from an Azure engagement
An engagement with us as your Microsoft Azure consultancy produces some or all of the following, agreed in scope before it starts. The list is the one published on our cloud consulting page.
- A current-state assessment. The workload inventory, what each one depends on, where the data lives, and which items have no owner.
- A target architecture. The account and subscription structure, the network layout and the managed services chosen, with the reasons written down.
- A landing zone design. Identity, network boundaries, logging, guardrails and the tagging standard, in a form that can be built from code.
- An identity and access model. Roles, boundaries and the joiner, mover and leaver path, rather than a list of people with administrator rights.
- A security baseline. Encryption, logging and configuration standards mapped to whichever framework your contract names.
- A migration plan. Workloads grouped into waves, each with a strategy, a rollback point and a downtime window agreed in advance.
- Runbooks and an operations model. Who is paged, what they do, and what the monitoring is actually watching.
What to ask Azure consultants before you hire
Whether you need an Azure consultant for a single assessment or an Azure managed service provider for the long run, these questions work on us and on everyone else you are considering. Most come from our cloud consulting page.
- Do you resell the infrastructure you are recommending? If the answer is yes, ask how the margin is disclosed and whether the recommendation would change without it.
- Whose name is on the cloud account and the repository? Anything other than yours is a dependency you did not agree to.
- Which workload will you move first, and why that one? A credible answer names a low risk workload and explains what it is meant to prove.
- Show me the landing zone as code. If the environment was built by hand it cannot be rebuilt, reviewed or audited the same way twice.
- Which certifications do you hold, and which are your partner's? Audited and self declared are different claims, and so are a firm's own certifications and its partner's.
- What is your own attestation status? Ask for the report rather than accepting a logo. We will tell you plainly that we hold none.
- Who operates this after go live, and under what terms? A design nobody can run is not finished.
Frequently asked questions
What do your Azure consulting services cover?
Fifteen services, listed on this page: Azure OpenAI Services, Azure Machine Learning, Azure AI Bot Services, Computer Vision, Azure Cognitive Services, Azure Data Factory, Azure SQL Database, Azure Database Migration Service, Power BI Dashboards, Virtual Machines, AKS, Azure VMware Solution, Virtual Network, Azure Security Center and Azure Monitor.
Can you move VMware workloads to Azure without rewriting them?
Yes. Azure VMware Solution extends existing VMware workloads to Azure with native compatibility, without refactoring legacy applications. Microsoft describes it as private clouds of VMware vSphere clusters built from dedicated bare-metal Azure infrastructure.
How much does Azure consulting cost?
A cloud assessment and roadmap is priced by the number of workloads and how much of the estate has to be inventoried. Our rates are $150 to $250 per hour, depending on the seniority and mix of the team, and we fix the price in writing against a defined scope. Migration is priced by workload count and complexity, ongoing optimisation is usually a retainer, and our rates are $150 to $250 per hour.
What happened to Azure Security Center?
Microsoft's November 2021 release notes record that Azure Security Center and Azure Defender became Microsoft Defender for Cloud, which Microsoft now describes as a Cloud Native Application Protection Platform.
Who owns the cloud accounts and the code?
You do. The repository and the cloud accounts are in your name, with no licence back to us and no dependency on us continuing to exist.