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Readiness
A six-week diagnostic that maps workloads, contracts, and risk to a defensible target architecture — before any migration spend is committed.
Wise Forge Labs · Research-led cloud practice
A doctoral-research-anchored cloud governance and FinOps practice for mid-market firms — typically 25 to 500 employees — in healthcare, financial services, and professional services, where regulatory exposure and runaway cloud spend cannot be left to improvise. Every recommendation is scored against a peer-reviewed rubric before it leaves the briefing memo.
Fixed bearing — fractional advisor on fixed retainer
Doctoral-research backstop
Every recommendation runs through a backstop grounded in doctoral-level operational research — the position holds up to board review because the position has been written, peer-reviewed, and published somewhere it can be cited.
Peer-reviewed rubric
The brief from a discovery call is scored on a rubric built from NIST CSF 2.0, ISO/IEC 27001 + 27017, the FinOps Framework, HITRUST CSF, and SOC 2 / TSC. Auditors already know the vocabulary; the briefing memo speaks it natively.
Mid-market focus
Firms of roughly 25 to 500 headcount in healthcare, financial services, and professional services — large enough to feel regulatory exposure, small enough that improvising a platform team is not an option. Engagements outside that band are referred on.
The practice
Most engagements begin with one capability and end with the others — landed together so the steady-state is a system, not a stack of point solutions.
A six-week diagnostic that maps workloads, contracts, and risk to a defensible target architecture — before any migration spend is committed.
Multi-account foundations, identity boundaries, policy-as-code, and the operating cadence that keeps all of it from drifting after handover.
Wave planning, application dependency mapping, and cutover choreography — structured so clinical, financial, and client-facing work stays live.
Mapping obligations (NIST CSF 2.0, HITRUST, PCI, GLBA, FFIEC) to controls that already exist in the cloud, with a remediation queue that is realistic to execute.
Instrumentation, chargeback, and a quarterly savings review tied to a budget model leadership will sign. The savings are the output, not the goal.
A senior practitioner in your standing meetings — architecture review board, vendor renewals, incident response — without the full outsourcing contract.
Linked resource
NIST CSF 2.0 alignment whitepaper · 12 pages · on-demand PDF
The same rubric the practice uses in briefings, mapped against the six functions for 25–500-person regulated firms.
Tools & research
Run the diagnostic, estimate the FinOps take, or read the briefing memos we have already published — useful before you book a discovery call, useful after one.
Diagnostic
Run the 12-question diagnostic yourself before booking a discovery call — same rubric the engagement uses.
Diagnostic
A weighted calculator that returns a defensible range for a structured FinOps engagement against your monthly bill.
Content
Briefing memos, rubric companion pieces, and the working vocabulary behind the practice.
Proof
Anonymised engagements across the three verticals — what landed, what was rolled back, what the next CIO had to inherit.
Where we work
We turn down engagements outside these zones. The pain patterns, the regulatory anchors, and the vendor dynamics are different enough that generic cloud advice defaults to unhelpful.
Pressures we inherit
What ships at handover
Flagship engagement
A typical programme lands in the $1M-plus band and runs roughly six months before stepping down into the fractional advisor retainer. The shape below is the default — every programme starts from it and is re-fit to the firm.
Diagnose
~ 3 weeks
Land
~ 8 weeks
Migrate
~ 12 weeks
Steady-state
Ongoing retainer
Methodology
Most cloud boutiques are vendor-aligned; the methodology reads like a resale of the partner programme. Ours is anchored in peer-reviewed research on cloud governance — and in the working patterns that have held up across regulated industries over the last decade. It is a defensible answer when the board asks why the recommendation is what it is.
What we publish
Briefing memos after each phase, with assumptions cited and alternative positions tracked.
What we refuse
Referral fees from cloud vendors. Rebadged product. Recommendations that aren’t repeatable by a team that doesn’t include us.
Voices from the cohort
The same vocabulary the briefing memo is scored against — cited by the auditors, the regulators, and the leadership teams we hand off to. Three engagements, three verticals, three anonymised cohorts.
Wise Forge Labs’ briefing memo speaks the same vocabulary as our auditor — that is the highest bar we needed from the engagement.
VP, Platform Engineering
VP, Platform Engineering
Mid-market ACA payer (anonymised)
The FinOps take landed in the first quarter, and the chargeback model has held up under FFIEC review — we did not have to renegotiate either when the regulator came back.
CIO
CIO, regional community bank
Mid-market regional bank (anonymised)
The fractional advisor sits in our architecture review board every fortnight and has cut our vendor renewals from a quarterly fire drill to a documented decision.
Managing Partner
Managing Partner, mid-sized advisory firm
Mid-market professional-services firm (anonymised)
Start the conversation
The first conversation is a one-hour briefing. We listen, ask three or four pointed questions, and tell you whether we are the right firm for the next step — or whether you should hire elsewhere.
We respond to briefings within two business days. No newsletter signup, no AI-mediated triage.