Expert Tech Pilot provides Microsoft Azure consulting and cloud architecture services to businesses throughout Northeast Ohio, including Cleveland, Akron, Macedonia, Solon, Independence, and surrounding communities. The work covers cloud architecture, migration planning, cloud-hosted .NET applications, identity and access design, reliability, and cost management. The goal is a platform your team can operate with confidence, not a migration that trades one set of surprises for another.
What this service covers
Azure consulting is often sold as a migration exercise: move the servers, close the data center, declare success. That framing misses the decisions that determine whether the result is actually better. A cloud architecture has to fit the application, the data, the security obligations, the operating team, and the budget — not just the target platform.
- Azure architecture. Subscription and resource organization, networking, compute and hosting choices, data services, identity boundaries, and environment separation.
- Migration readiness. An honest assessment of what can move, what should be reworked first, what should stay put, and what the move will cost to operate.
- Cloud-hosted .NET. Designing and adapting ASP.NET, background services, APIs, and scheduled jobs for Azure hosting and deployment.
- Identity and access. Authentication and authorization design that fits the organization's existing directory and application roles.
- Reliability and observability. Health checks, logging, alerting, backup and recovery expectations, and a deployment process that can be reversed.
- Cost discipline. Right-sized resources, environment strategy, storage lifecycle, and the cost visibility needed to keep spending accountable.
Does this application belong in Azure?
Not every workload should move. A lift-and-shift can be the right first step when speed matters and the application is already well behaved. It can also produce a more expensive, harder-to-operate version of a system that was fine where it was. The useful question is not “cloud or on-premises” but “what does this application need, and which environment serves those needs at an acceptable cost and risk?”
Factors that tend to favor Azure include variable demand, a need for geographic redundancy, integration with Microsoft identity and productivity services, a small operations team, or a requirement to provision environments quickly. Factors that can favor keeping a workload where it is include predictable steady load, tight latency to on-premises equipment, specialized hardware, or a data residency or security constraint that makes movement expensive.
A readiness assessment should answer those questions in writing before anyone commits to a migration budget. If the best answer is a hybrid model, or no move at all, that is a legitimate finding.
Azure architecture
Good Azure architecture is mostly about clear boundaries. Which subscription owns which workload? Where does identity terminate? Which services are allowed to talk to the database? What is shared between environments, and what must never be? Those decisions are easier to change on a diagram than after a production incident.
I design around the organization's operating reality: who will deploy, who will be on call, what monitoring already exists, and how much platform management the team can absorb. A design that assumes a dedicated cloud operations group is not a good design for a ten-person IT department.
Typical architecture work includes landing-zone and resource-group structure, network and private-endpoint planning, App Service versus container versus virtual-machine decisions, Azure SQL and storage choices, environment strategy, secrets management, and the deployment pipeline that ties them together.
Migration readiness and planning
A migration plan is more credible when it starts with an inventory rather than a target date. I assess the application portfolio in practical terms: dependencies, runtime versions, data volume, authentication, integrations, licensing, backup and recovery requirements, and the business owner who can make decisions about each system.
From that inventory, workloads can be grouped into sensible waves. The first wave should prove the operating model — identity, networking, deployment, monitoring, and support — on something low-risk. Later waves can then move faster because the path is known. The plan should also say what will not move, and why.
Migration is not finished when the application starts in Azure. It is finished when backups restore, alerts reach someone, access is reviewed, the deployment pipeline works, and the business has accepted the new operating process. Planning for that end state from the beginning is what prevents a migration from becoming a permanent side project.
I am an independent software architect, not a managed service provider or a compliance auditor. I can design and implement Azure architecture and work within your security requirements, but I do not certify compliance or provide a 24/7 operations desk.
Cloud-hosted .NET applications
Azure is often the destination for an existing .NET application. The application itself still has to be ready for it. Configuration and secrets must leave the source tree. Logging must go somewhere durable. Session state, file storage, and background work must have a plan that does not depend on a single server's local disk. Deployment must be repeatable.
I work on both sides of that boundary: the Azure resources and the application changes needed to use them well. That includes ASP.NET hosting, API services, scheduled and background processing, connection management, structured logging, health endpoints, and Azure DevOps build and release pipelines. Existing experience includes cloud migration work in an enterprise application group and day-to-day delivery through Azure DevOps.
The goal is not a cloud-native rewrite by default. It is an application that runs predictably in its hosting environment, can be deployed without heroics, and can be diagnosed by whoever is on call.
Security and identity design
Security design starts with the organization's existing identity system and access requirements, not a generic checklist. I work through who needs access, from where, to which resource, under whose authority, and for how long. The answers determine the authentication pattern, role model, network boundaries, secret handling, and audit trail.
Relevant experience includes OAuth 2.0 token services and externally exposed application access through an Azure proxy. Those patterns are useful when an application needs to serve employees, partners, or customers without creating a second identity silo.
I design within the policies your security team sets and document the assumptions and residual risks in plain language. I do not claim to make a system “secure” in absolute terms, and I do not substitute for a formal penetration test, compliance assessment, or legal review.
Reliability, observability, and performance
Cloud reliability is an operating property, not a checkbox on a resource. It comes from knowing what the application needs, what happens when a dependency is slow, how failures are detected, and how recovery is practiced. I design health checks, logging, alerting, and backup expectations around the business impact of an outage rather than around what is easiest to monitor.
Performance work follows the same evidence-first approach. Is the bottleneck the database, the network path, a synchronous call to a third-party service, or the application code? The answer determines whether the fix is an index, a caching layer, an asynchronous pattern, a hosting change, or a design change. Adding capacity before identifying the bottleneck is usually the most expensive way to guess.
Cost-management principles
Cloud cost problems are usually architecture problems wearing a billing report. The practical levers are straightforward: right-size resources to measured demand, separate production from non-production, turn off what does not need to run, choose storage tiers that match access patterns, use committed capacity only where usage is genuinely predictable, and tag resources so someone can explain the bill.
I do not promise a specific savings percentage. I establish where the money is going, identify the changes that are safe and material, and leave the organization with a way to see cost by workload after the engagement ends.
Integration with enterprise systems
Azure rarely replaces the enterprise systems a business already runs. It sits between them. The integration design therefore matters as much as the cloud design: which system owns the master record, how data is validated, what happens when a downstream system is unavailable, and how a failed message is retried or corrected.
I work with APIs, SQL Server data flows, file exchange, identity providers, and Microsoft 365 services such as SharePoint and Microsoft Graph. The same rules apply across all of them: explicit contracts, observable failures, idempotent processing where possible, and a support path that does not depend on reading application logs by hand.
What an engagement looks like
- A free 40-minute working session. We discuss the application or portfolio, the business driver, the current environment, and the decision in front of you.
- Discovery and review. I examine the application, infrastructure, identity, data, deployment process, and operating constraints. The depth is matched to the decision.
- A written architecture or readiness assessment. You get findings, options, trade-offs, a recommended target state, risks, and a sequenced next step.
- Design and implementation support. I can produce the detailed design, work alongside your team, or implement the Azure and application changes directly.
- Operational handoff. Deployment notes, runbooks, monitoring expectations, and a clear list of what remains. The goal is an architecture your team can operate.
Common questions
Do we need a migration assessment before we can get a price?
For a small, well-understood application, a working session and a short review may be enough. For a portfolio or a business-critical system, an assessment is the responsible first step because the migration scope depends on facts that are not visible from the outside.
Can you work with our existing Azure tenant and IT team?
Yes. Most engagements work inside an existing tenant and alongside internal IT or a managed service provider. I document the boundaries and access required so the work does not create a parallel operating model.
Are you a Microsoft partner or managed service provider?
No. Expert Tech Pilot is an independent consultancy. The relevant credential is the individual Microsoft certification listed on this page. I do not resell Azure, provide 24/7 monitoring, or act as a managed service provider.
Can you help if we already started a migration?
Yes. A stalled or over-budget migration is a common starting point. I review what has been built, identify the decisions that are causing friction, and recommend whether to continue, adjust, or stop and simplify.
What is the best first step?
Book a free 40-minute working session, or send a short email describing the application, the current environment, and the decision you are trying to make. That is enough to determine whether an assessment is warranted.
Serving Businesses Across Northeast Ohio
Expert Tech Pilot provides Microsoft Azure consulting and cloud architecture services to businesses in Cleveland, Akron, Solon, Independence, Macedonia, and surrounding Northeast Ohio communities. On-site consulting is available when a project benefits from in-person collaboration, with remote services available as well.
Cloud work is often remote by nature. On-site time is most useful for architecture workshops, team interviews, or the meetings where a decision needs to be made in the room; the rest of the engagement can be handled remotely.