Microsoft Azure landing zones, migration, day-2 operations and cost management for UK small businesses (10–50 staff). Our office is on Tameside Business Park — we know the local fibre, the local manufacturers, the line-of-business apps you run. ISO 27001 certified. Microsoft Solutions Partner for Modern Work. No reseller markups, no kickback structures — just Azure done well.
Written and reviewed by
Brett Casterton — Founder & Managing Director, Inology IT. Ex-UK Armed Forces, 24 years running IT and cloud infrastructure for Manchester small businesses. ISO 27001 lead. Last reviewed: June 2026.
Most "Azure consultants" do one piece — a migration, a re-platform, a security review — and walk away. We run the lot, day after day, year after year. Here's what that means in practice.
The Azure foundation — Entra ID identity, VNet topology, Azure Firewall or NSGs, naming and tagging policy, RBAC roles, Log Analytics workspace and Defender for Cloud. Built once, properly, so everything that comes after has a stable base. We use Microsoft's small-enterprise reference architecture, scaled to your size.
Lift-and-shift VMs with Azure Migrate, re-platform databases to Azure SQL or managed instance, or replace tired on-prem apps with SaaS equivalents (Sage on-prem → Sage Cloud, file shares → SharePoint). We do the assessment, build the plan, run the cutover at a weekend, and stay through hypercare.
Azure bills are unpredictable by default — predictable by design. We tag every resource, set budget alerts, shut down dev VMs out of hours, move cold data to archive storage, and right-size monthly. The first invoice after we take over is typically 25–40% lower. We share the bill — no resale markup.
Multi-user Windows hosting for line-of-business apps that don't have a SaaS version — Sage 200, Pegasus Opera, OrderWise, Iris, Eclipse. Users connect from anywhere with full Windows desktop performance. Often cheaper than per-user RDP licensing once you factor in elastic scaling.
Most small businesses end up hybrid — some workloads in Azure, some on-prem. We connect the two with Entra Connect Sync, site-to-site VPN or ExpressRoute, and treat them as one environment in our monitoring and helpdesk. Single sign-on, conditional access, MFA — all enforced consistently.
Patch management, monitoring with alerts that reach humans, backup with quarterly restore tests, incident response, capacity planning and a monthly cost review. Azure isn't fire-and-forget — it needs running. That's what "managed" means here.
Workloads we've migrated to Azure for sectors that can't lose a day: accountancy practices in January, healthcare with NHS DSPT obligations, and manufacturers where a stopped line is measured in pounds-per-minute.
Our office is on Tameside Business Park, Denton (M34 3QS). For Azure clients in Tameside, Manchester, Stockport, Trafford and Oldham — when an Azure-connected issue needs hands on the office network (ExpressRoute, VPN concentrator, on-prem domain controller, firewall rules), we can be there inside 30 minutes during business hours.
Try getting that from a remote-only Azure consultancy in London.
Sits inside the SecureState™ Cloud and Identity categories — Entra ID, conditional access, Azure governance, cost posture and backup. Reviewed every 90 days as part of how we run your IT, not a one-off audit that decays the day it's signed.
See how SecureState worksInventory of current workloads, dependencies, line-of-business apps and licences. Azure Migrate discovery agent runs for 2 weeks to get real utilisation data — not vendor spec-sheet guesses.
Landing zone, target architecture, identity model, network topology, backup strategy, cost forecast. One document, plain English, signed by you before we touch anything.
Landing zone deployed in 2–3 days. Workloads migrated in waves over weekends. Test before cutover; cutover with a rollback plan in hand; hypercare for 30 days after.
Monthly cost review, quarterly architecture review, ongoing patching/monitoring/backup. We treat Azure as a living environment — it gets better month-by-month, not worse.
Azure managed support (monitoring, patching, cost review, incident response) is included in Plus (£70/user) and Complete (£85/user). Azure consumption (the Microsoft bill) is separate — and we pass it through at cost, with no markup. Stand-alone Azure migration and consultancy is also available for businesses that aren't ready to move their full IT support.
Their on-prem Sage 200 server was 7 years old, slow in January, dependent on a single IT contractor. We moved them to Azure Virtual Desktop with Sage hosted properly, gave them DR across UK regions, retired the on-prem hardware and cut their per-user cost by 18%.
A 25-person manufacturer running a 15-year-old ERP nobody supports any more. We lifted-and-shifted to Azure VM, added geo-redundant backup, set up site-to-site VPN to the shop floor, and bought them 5 more years to plan a proper SaaS replacement — without a forced rebuild.
10-person practice that wanted M365, modern identity and DR — but the case management vendor wouldn't certify Azure yet. We built a hybrid: M365 + Entra ID for mail, identity and files; on-prem server for case management; Azure for backup and DR. Single sign-on across both, MFA everywhere.
A 20-person marketing agency in Spinningfields running a creative line-of-business app that hated their old VPN. We hosted the app on an Azure VM, fronted it with Entra ID and conditional access, added immutable backup and replaced the VPN with always-on tunnels — so the team works the same from the office, Salford Quays or home.
Honest answer: not always. For a small business with a single file server that's already paid for, Azure is usually more expensive over a 3-year window once you include compute, storage, egress and Defender. Where Azure wins is when you need geographic redundancy, instant DR, line-of-business apps that already prefer cloud (Sage 200cloud, Xero, modern ERP), seasonal capacity (accountancy in January), or you want to retire ageing on-prem hardware. We model both before we recommend either — and we'll tell you to stay on-prem if that's the right answer.
Three things. (1) Tag every resource with owner, environment and cost-centre so we know what's spending. (2) Set budget alerts at 70%, 90% and 110% per resource group so surprises don't reach the invoice. (3) Right-size monthly, shut down dev/test VMs out of hours, move static data to cool storage. Average client saves 25–40% on their first Azure invoice after we take over. We share the bill with you — there's no markup, no Microsoft kickback structure.
Yes — it's one of the more common projects we run. We assess whether lift-and-shift (VM as-is), re-platform (e.g. SQL on managed instance), or SaaS-replacement makes sense. For an accountancy practice with a single domain controller and a file server, that's usually a 2-day migration on a weekend with zero perceived downtime. For a manufacturer with an ERP and 6 line-of-business apps, it's a 6–12 week project with proper testing.
A landing zone is the Azure foundation — identity (Entra ID), networking (VNets, NSGs, firewall), governance (policies, tagging), monitoring (Log Analytics) and security baseline (Defender for Cloud). Building a workload without one is like building a house on sand — it works until it doesn't. For small businesses, we use Microsoft's small-enterprise landing zone reference architecture, scaled down. It takes us 2–3 days to deploy and saves months of unpicking later.
Yes — and we'd argue most small businesses end up here, not in pure cloud. Domain controllers, file shares and a print server might stay on-prem for performance and licensing. ERP, mail, identity and backup move to Azure and M365. We link the two with Azure AD Connect (or Entra Connect Sync), site-to-site VPN or ExpressRoute, and treat them as one environment from a support perspective.
No. A VM in Azure can fail just like a VM on-prem — it just fails in someone else's data centre. Resilience comes from how we configure it: availability zones for HA, Azure Site Recovery for cross-region DR, geo-redundant storage for data, and immutable backup separate from the live system. We document RPO and RTO per workload so you know — before the disaster — how much data you'd lose and how long you'd be down.
Almost always, yes. Sage 50, Sage 200, Pegasus Opera, Iris, OrderWise, Eclipse — we've put them all in Azure. Some prefer Azure Virtual Desktop (multi-user Windows host), others prefer a single Windows VM with RDP. The choice is licensing and user-count driven, not technical. We size it based on your actual usage, not the vendor's worst-case spec sheet.
Same as everything else we run — monitoring 24/7, helpdesk in hours, on-site within 30 minutes for Tameside/Manchester clients when it's an Azure-connected issue (Entra outage, ExpressRoute, etc.). Azure managed support is included in our Plus (£70/user) and Complete (£85/user) tiers. Stand-alone Azure consultancy and remediation is also available — talk to us.
Talk to Brett or Simon — 30 minutes, on the phone or video. We'll look at what you've got, what it's costing, and whether Azure makes the picture better or worse. No deck. No decision pressure.