Black Sheep SystemsInfrastructure assessment
What is running, what is unsupported, what is one failure away from a bad week, and what it would take to change that.
CON
Technical Consulting
An outside read on the environment, delivered in plain language with a plan attached.
An assessment is only worth what it changes. The deliverable here is not a slide deck describing what you already know — it is a written account of what the environment actually looks like, what it is costing you, and what to do first.
The honest version is rarely the flattering one. Some of what gets found will reflect badly on decisions that were reasonable at the time and are not reasonable now. You get told anyway, with the cost of fixing it and the cost of not.
No reseller relationships, no vendor margin. When a recommendation says buy something, there is nothing on the other side of it.
What this covers
Endpoint & fleet review
Imaging, patching, lifecycle, and the gap between the standard build and what is actually on desks.
Migration planning
Hardware refresh, platform moves, hosting changes, and mail migrations — sequenced, with the rollback written down first.
Vendor & tooling selection
Requirements, a short list, and a recommendation with the trade-offs stated plainly.
Documentation recovery
Writing down the systems nobody wrote down, before the person who remembers them leaves.
Second opinion
A read on a plan or quote you have already been given, before you sign it.
How it runs
What working together looks like.
Look first
A fixed-scope review: interviews, access to what you can safely give access to, and time in the actual environment rather than a questionnaire.
Written findings
A document you can hand to a board or a bank: what was found, ranked by risk and by cost, in language a non-technical reader can act on.
A sequenced plan
Not a wish list. First, next, later — with dependencies and rough effort, so it survives contact with a budget.
Optional help executing
The other three divisions exist. If you want the plan carried out rather than handed over, that is a separate conversation and a separate quote.
Fit
Worth a conversation — or not.
A good fit
- An environment nobody has audited from the outside in years
- A migration or refresh that needs planning before money is committed
- A quote or roadmap you want read by someone with no stake in it
- Institutional knowledge concentrated in one person
Not a fit
- A report needed to justify a decision already made
- Formal regulatory certification or audit sign-off — that needs an accredited auditor
- Engagements where access to the real environment is off the table