Hyperscaler deployment on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud ca-regions. Private cloud on Proxmox and Nutanix when jurisdiction rules it out of hyperscalers. Nine deployment regions coast to coast, chosen by what the data actually needs, not vendor sales incentives.
Not every workload belongs in a hyperscaler. Not every workload belongs on-prem. We size each piece by its real jurisdictional, cost, and operational constraints. No cookie-cutter "lift and shift to AWS" recommendations.
AWS ca-central-1, Azure Canada Central, Google Cloud northamerica-northeast. Landing zones, IAM baselines, cost controls, Canadian-region guardrails from day one.
Proxmox or Nutanix clusters in Canadian data centres you fully control. For workloads that cannot live in hyperscalers for jurisdictional, sovereignty, or cost reasons.
3-2-1 backup design, documented recovery runbooks, quarterly restore tests with evidence capture. Recovery Point and Recovery Time Objectives you can actually meet.
Private + public hybrid architectures. Workload placement by jurisdiction, sensitivity, and economics. Clean handoff interfaces so you are not stuck re-architecting if a vendor changes terms.
Reserved instance planning, right-sizing, idle resource detection, spend forecasting. Monthly review cycle flags drift before it becomes a budget surprise.
Most cloud consultancies get paid by the hyperscalers as resellers. That changes the advice. Here is how we work differently.
Workload placement starts with where the data is allowed to live, not where the pricing is best. PIPEDA scope, Quebec Law 25 residency, OSFI B-13 locality, all weighed in Phase 01, not after an auditor flags it.
If a hyperscaler cannot keep your data in Canada, we flag that in writing before deployment.
We are not an AWS Advanced Partner, not a Microsoft Gold reseller, not a Google Cloud Premier. No vendor pays us commission for recommending their stack.
That means when Proxmox is the right answer, we say Proxmox. When Azure is right, we say Azure. The recommendation is driven by your constraints, not our rebate schedule.
Cost guardrails configured on day one: budget alerts, right-sizing automation, idle resource detection, reserved instance planning. Monthly spend review with recommendations, not just a bigger bill.
Target: your cloud spend is predictable within +/- 5% of forecast most months, with the drivers explained when it is not.
None of them, by default. We are not partnered with AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud at any sales tier, so no rebate structure skews the recommendation. The right hyperscaler depends on which Canadian region meets your residency rule, which services are actually in the Canada region (not every service is), existing team skill, and your long-term exit optionality.
For many Canadian workloads, Azure Canada Central or AWS ca-central-1 are both viable. For workloads where sovereignty rules out hyperscalers, Proxmox or Nutanix in a Canadian data centre wins.
Egress is the single biggest hidden cost in multi-cloud and hybrid architectures. We design data-locality boundaries upfront so egress is predictable, not surprising. Workloads that need to talk across clouds get an explicit decision at design time with the cost modeled.
For lock-in, we favor infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi) over vendor-specific consoles, and portable patterns (containers, PostgreSQL, S3-compatible storage) over proprietary services where it makes sense. If you ever need to move, the lift is weeks, not years.
With the right architecture, yes for data at rest, and for most data in transit. Hyperscaler Canadian regions keep storage within Canada by configuration. For data in transit, we design routes that stay within Canadian backbone networks wherever possible.
The honest caveat: some vendor-managed services route control-plane telemetry through US regions regardless of where your data lives. We identify these during Phase 01 scoping and either avoid them or document the exception in writing.
Primary workloads in YYZ-01 (Toronto) fail over to YUL-01 (Montreal) as the designed secondary. For higher-tier clients, we deploy active-active across both. Operational workloads in regional metros (YVR, YYC, YEG, etc.) have cross-region replication and documented runbooks.
Every DR design includes quarterly restore tests with evidence capture. Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) are agreed in writing, tested, and reported on. No "we have backups" without proving the restore works.
Yes, and that is a common engagement starting point. Typical first-pass audit finds 20-40% savings from right-sizing, reserved instance planning, deleting idle resources, and switching workloads to spot/preemptible where safe.
Ongoing: monthly spend review with trend analysis, forecast variance explained, and specific actions. Not just a dashboard with no owner.
Yes, and that commitment is in the engagement document. All infrastructure is defined in your own Terraform or Pulumi repository, not our proprietary tooling. Runbooks, architecture docs, and account access all transfer cleanly.
If you move the operations in-house or to another provider, the person taking over inherits a complete, documented, versioned environment, not a bus-factor-of-one situation.