Advisory
Independent advice on network and security decisions.
Thirty years inside enterprise networking and security, offered as judgement on decisions that have not been made yet. Scoped work with a written answer at the end.
Available, not packaged
This is not a product catalogue. The work below describes the kinds of question I am useful on; the shape of any particular engagement is agreed before it starts. If what you need is close to one of these but not the same, that is usually fine and worth a conversation.
What this is, and what it is not
Judgement on a decision: reviewing a design before the budget is committed, writing the specification, assessing somebody else's proposal, choosing between options, or explaining after the fact why something failed and what should change.
Not offered here
- Implementation and configuration. I will review what is planned and audit what was built, but I am not the pair of hands that builds it.
- On-call, standby, and operational duty. Nothing here places me on a rota or an escalation path.
- Staff augmentation. This is not a body for a headcount gap.
- Training and enablement, in any form. Every course, workshop and certification path I deliver is delivered through Red Education, and enquiries about them belong there rather than here.
The kinds of work
Design and architecture review
An independent read of a proposed design before it is built and paid for. What it assumes, where it will strain, what it will cost to operate, and which parts are decisions rather than defaults.
Specification and RFP authoring
Writing what to ask for. A request for proposal (RFP) that describes the outcome precisely enough to be scored, rather than one assembled from a vendor's own datasheet.
Independent assessment of a proposal
You have a quotation and a diagram from a supplier and no neutral way to judge either. A second reading, in writing, with the questions worth putting back to them.
Technology and vendor selection
Stay or move, consolidate or keep two, on-premises or as a service. A defined question, the trade-offs stated in both directions, and a recommendation that says which way and why.
Post-incident review
Not incident response. The review afterwards, when the fire is out and somebody has to give an honest account of what happened and what should change. Scheduled work, weeks after the event, written for an audience that includes people who were not in the room.
By arrangement
There is a narrower category of engagement that does involve being present in real time, on site or remotely, during an operation that cannot be repeated: a migration window, a cutover, a planned failover. It is available, it is priced accordingly, and it is arranged case by case rather than booked. It is mentioned here for completeness rather than offered as a routine service.
Why independent matters here
I hold current instructor authorizations across six vendors' platforms and sell none of them. There is no product on this side of the table, no quota, and no partner margin behind the recommendation. When the answer is that the incumbent is fine and the project is unnecessary, that answer costs me nothing to give.
The judgement is on public record rather than asserted: the industry timeline on this site runs to more than a hundred and sixty company histories, and the tools compute their answers rather than estimating them.
The practice itself
A separate body of writing covers the work rather than the offer: how technical support and network operations are actually run, the routines and checks that hold, the scripts worth keeping, and the failures worth knowing about. It is written from thirty years of doing it, and it is free to read.
In preparation.
How an engagement runs
- A conversation about the decision you are facing, at no charge, to establish whether I am the right person for it.
- A written scope: the question, the deliverable, the dates and the fee. Fixed price per engagement rather than by the hour.
- The work, with access to whoever holds the technical detail.
- A written answer you can circulate internally, and a call to walk through it.
If there is a decision on your desk
The useful first message says what the decision is and when it has to be made.