Cloud Services
Cloud migration and managed cloud operations for defense contractors and regulated industries — architected around your compliance profile, not around a platform we resell.
A proven track record
Guided by requirements, not trends.
VSO has a proven track record of guiding customers through successful transitions from on-premises to cloud workloads. Our team helps you understand the strategic benefits of cloud adoption while providing expert guidance on cost optimization and realizing cloud flexibility without compromising budget control.
We tailor every transition to the customer’s actual requirements. Our methodology rests on continuous investment in automation, comprehensive documentation, and instrumentation of industry best practices across the full cloud lifecycle — from initial infrastructure design through ongoing optimization.
The Right Choice
An independent cloud advisor
The choice of cloud provider is a critical decision that affects your company and your customers. As your independent advisor, we make sure your cloud solution aligns with both performance requirements and economic objectives, using a phased approach that allows flexibility in timeline and cloud maturity over time.
As a certified Microsoft Solutions Partner and AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner, our recommendations are backed by verified expertise on both platforms. Once your migration is complete, our Managed IT Services team provides ongoing management and monitoring across every region you run in.
Design Principles
Every environment we architect is designed to:
Principle 01
Wow
End users never see your architecture diagram. They see how long it takes to open a file, log in, or join a call. We baseline those numbers before we move anything, so the improvement is measurable rather than asserted.
- Performance baselined before and after migration
- Single sign-on across the environment
- Sub-second access on migrated file shares
- Cost-per-user reporting you can hand to finance
Principle 02
Optimize
Optimization is a mechanism, not a project. We build the review cadence into the engagement so the environment gets cheaper and faster over time instead of quietly drifting in the other direction.
- Monthly right-sizing and reserved capacity review
- Egress and data transfer monitoring
- Automated cost anomaly alerting
- Quarterly architecture review against new platform services
Principle 03
Streamline
Every migration runs the same way: automated where it can be, documented where it cannot, and reversible at every stage. Repeatability is what turns a migration from an event into a process.
- Infrastructure-as-code landing zones
- Pilot workload first, then phased waves
- Documented rollback at every stage
- Chain-of-custody records for data transfer
Principle 04
Reduce Overhead
A cloud environment that needs constant hand-holding has just moved your problem, not solved it. We design for the smallest reasonable operational footprint, then take that footprint off your team's plate entirely.
- Centralized identity and access management
- Automated patching and configuration baselines
- Consolidated monitoring across regions
- Full handoff to VSO Managed IT Services
Principle 05
Secure
Security that cannot be evidenced is not security an assessor will accept. We implement controls that are enforceable, monitorable, and continuously documented, so your compliance posture holds up on the day someone asks.
- NIST SP 800-171 aligned baselines
- Continuous configuration drift detection
- Audit logging with assessment-aligned retention
- Evidence artifacts maintained continuously
Design Thinking Inputs for Architectural Planning and Design
Seven input domains shape every environment we architect. We gather all seven before a single resource is deployed, because retrofitting any one of them after go-live is where cloud budgets go to die. Select a domain to see what we look at.
Input 01
Compliance & Security Profile
Which frameworks you are obligated to, and which of their controls the platform inherits on your behalf versus which remain yours to implement and evidence. This input sets the boundary for everything that follows.
- CMMC 2.0
- NIST SP 800-171
- DFARS 252.204-7012
- FedRAMP
- ITAR
- HIPAA
- FDA
- PCI
- GDPR
- SOX
Input 02
Performance
The numbers your users actually feel. Nobody notices a well-architected subnet; everybody notices a file that takes eleven seconds to open. We measure before we move, so improvement can be proven.
- Response time
- I/O density
- Throughput under concurrent load
- Latency to primary user locations
Input 03
Historical Usage Patterns
What your load has actually done over time, not what someone estimated in a planning meeting. Sizing to peak wastes money for eleven months of the year; sizing to average fails in the twelfth.
- Peak seasons
- Enrollment and onboarding cycles
- Month-end and quarter-end spikes
- Growth trend over trailing 24 months
Input 04
Application / Workload
What you are running, how old it is, and what it quietly depends on. The interdependencies are the part that surprises people, and they are the reason migrations slip.
- Quantity
- Age
- Currency and vendor support status
- Interdependencies
Input 05
Profile Maintenance
The hardening baselines your environment gets measured against, and the mechanism that keeps it measured. A configuration baseline is only worth what your drift detection is worth.
- DISA STIGs
- NSA hardening guidance
- CIS Benchmarks
- Continuous drift detection
Input 06
Data: In Flight and At Rest
How data is protected while it moves and while it sits. For regulated workloads the encryption module matters as much as the encryption itself, which is where a lot of otherwise sound architectures fall down.
- End-to-end encryption
- FIPS 140-3 validated modules
- Key management and rotation
- 80/20 or pass/fail thresholds
Input 07
Data: Sensitivity / Toxicity
What the data actually is, how it is shaped, and how much damage it does if it escapes. Toxicity drives where the data is allowed to live, and shape drives what you can do with it once it is there.
- Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI)
- Structured / unstructured
- Data lakes
- ML / AI training sets
Proper Positioning
Five steps, run in order. Each one produces something the next one needs, so nothing gets designed before we know what it has to hold.
Understand Your Users' Needs
Desired Future State
- Easy to Integrate
- Easy to Use
- Secure
Understand Your Existing Environment
Business
- Compliance & Security Profile
- Performance
- Historical Usage Patterns
- Application / Workload
- Discovery & Mapping
Security & Compliance
Production Protection
- Profile Maintenance
- Data: In Flight & At Rest
- Data: Sensitivity / Toxicity
Designing the Solution
MVPs Prioritized & Balanced
- Security
- Quick Wins
- Strategic
- Total Cost of Ownership
Modernization
Non-Disruptive
- Optimize, Decouple, Containerize
- Automate
- Adaptable MVP Exceptions Filter
- Use Case Catalog
Which Cloud is Right for You?
Success Story: Financial Services Cloud Migration
Challenge: A financial services client needed to establish a completely new cloud environment following a corporate restructuring, including Office 365 for email and productivity, and Azure Cloud for Government for their workloads.
Solution: Following our proven methodologies, VSO successfully executed a complex migration despite significant access restrictions to source systems. We collaborated closely with both the client and their former parent company to extract and migrate critical data from a consolidated environment into a new Azure Cloud account.
Results
Despite early project challenges related to system access, VSO successfully navigated the complexities and completed the migration ahead of schedule. This success led to:
This project illustrates our ability to provide complex cloud transformations under challenging circumstances while building long-term partnerships that extend beyond the initial migration.
