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Service · IT Consulting

IT Consulting

Strategic IT consulting and virtual CIO services from senior practitioners — technology strategy, architecture reviews, vendor selection, and digital transformation roadmaps grounded in what actually ships.

01 — Approach

How we engage.

IT consulting from people who build — not a slide deck and an invoice.SimplyRem provides strategic IT consulting, technology architecture review, and virtual CIO / CTO leadership for companies that need senior technology judgement without a senior full-time hire. Our consultants are practitioners first: the person advising your board on cloud strategy has also written the Terraform, shipped the product, and carried the pager. That means advice you can actually execute — not a generic transformation framework that looks impressive and changes nothing. No offshore associates relabelling vendor whitepapers. No recommendations conveniently aligned to a reseller commission.What we advise on
  • Technology strategy & roadmaps — turning business goals into a sequenced, costed technology plan your team can ship and your board can fund.
  • Architecture review & modernisation — an honest assessment of your systems, the risks hiding in them, and a pragmatic path off legacy without a doomed big-bang rewrite.
  • Virtual CIO / CTO (fractional leadership) — senior technology leadership on a fraction of a full-time hire: strategy, team building, board reporting, and the hard calls.
  • Cloud strategy & cost optimisation — cloud-vs-on-prem decisions, migration planning, and finding the 30–60% of cloud spend most companies quietly leak.
  • Vendor & software selection — independent evaluation and selection of platforms, tools, and partners, with no reseller relationship steering the outcome.
  • Digital transformation — modernising how your business runs on technology, scoped into shippable increments instead of a multi-year programme that stalls at month nine.
  • Technical due diligence — for investors and acquirers: a clear-eyed assessment of a target\'s codebase, architecture, team, and technical risk before the cheque clears.
  • IT operations & team scaling — org design, hiring plans, process, and the operational maturity work that turns a scrappy team into a reliable one.
Why teams choose our IT consulting services
  • Practitioners, not career consultants. Every advisor is a senior engineer or architect who still builds. The advice is grounded in what actually ships — not in a framework from a textbook.
  • Independent and vendor-agnostic. We hold no reseller relationships and take no kickbacks. The recommendation is the right one for you, full stop.
  • Honest, even when it costs us the project. We will tell you when you do not need the expensive rebuild, when your current stack is fine, and when the problem is people or process, not technology.
  • Advice you can execute. Every engagement ends with a concrete, sequenced plan — owners, costs, and milestones — not a 90-page strategy document that gets read once.
  • We can build it too. When you want the roadmap delivered, the same studio can execute — web, mobile, AI, cloud, infrastructure, and security under one roof. Strategy that knows what delivery actually costs.
  • Senior judgement, fast. You get a clear point of view in weeks, not a discovery phase that bills for months before saying anything useful.
Fractional CTO, a one-off strategy engagement, or full delivery — what do you need?We are honest about which one fits. A one-off strategy or architecture review is right when you have a specific decision to make — a platform choice, a re-architecture, a build-vs-buy call — and need senior judgement to make it well. A fractional / virtual CTO is right when you need ongoing technology leadership: a founder without a technical co-founder, a board that needs credible technology reporting, or a team that needs senior direction it cannot yet afford full-time. Full delivery is right when the strategy is clear and you want a senior studio to execute it. Many clients start with a strategy engagement and continue into fractional leadership or delivery — but we are happy to do just the thinking and hand it to your team.Our IT consulting process1. Discovery & listening (1 week)We talk to your leadership, your engineers, and where it matters your customers. We read the code, the architecture, the incidents, and the cloud bill. We come to understand the business before we say a word about technology.2. Assessment & analysis (1–2 weeks)An honest assessment of where you are — technology, team, process, cost, and risk — benchmarked against where you need to be. The uncomfortable findings included, not smoothed over.3. Strategy & roadmapA sequenced, costed plan: what to do, in what order, by whom, and why. Quick wins separated from long bets. Trade-offs made explicit so your team and board can decide with clear eyes.4. Decision support & executionWe help you make the calls — vendor selection, hiring, build-vs-buy — and, if you want, we execute. Either way, the plan is owned by your team, not locked in a consultant\'s head.5. Ongoing advisoryMost clients keep us on a light retainer for the decisions that keep coming — architecture reviews of new initiatives, vendor calls, board-prep, and a senior sounding board when something big is on the table.Where we go deep
  • Cloud & infrastructure strategy: AWS, GCP, Azure, on-prem and hybrid — see our Cloud & DevOps and server infrastructure practices.
  • Software & product architecture: web, mobile, and platform — backed by our web application development team.
  • AI strategy: where AI genuinely creates value versus where it is theatre — grounded in our AI & machine learning practice.
  • Security & compliance strategy: risk, programme design, and audit readiness — see our managed security and cybersecurity practices.
  • Technical due diligence: codebase, architecture, team, and risk assessment for investors and acquirers.
Who we work withOur IT consulting clients are typically founders without a technical co-founder who need credible technology leadership, scale-ups whose technology has outgrown their original decisions, established companies planning a modernisation or transformation, and investors who need clear-eyed technical due diligence before a deal. We do our best work when the question is real and the stakes are concrete — a platform decision, a transformation, a board that needs the truth — and the people on the other side are ready to act on honest advice.Engagement models & pricing
  • Strategy or architecture review — $15k–$60k, two to five weeks. Assessment, roadmap, and a concrete sequenced plan.
  • Virtual CIO / CTO — monthly retainer, from $6k. Fractional senior leadership, board reporting, and ongoing technology decisions.
  • Technical due diligence — $20k–$75k per target. Codebase, architecture, team, and risk assessment for an investment or acquisition.
  • Transformation advisory — scoped per programme. Strategy plus hands-on guidance through execution, often alongside our delivery teams.
  • Ongoing advisory retainer — monthly, from $4k. A senior sounding board for the decisions that keep coming.
We are booking new IT consulting engagements one quarter at a time. Tell us what you are deciding — we respond to every brief within one business day.

02 — What's included

Every engagement ships with.

Senior lead

A 10+-year practitioner who stays on the work, end-to-end.

Design system

A scalable foundation, not screen-by-screen one-offs.

Production deploys

Fortnightly increments to a staging URL.

Documentation

Runbooks, ADRs, and onboarding materials.

03 — Process

Four phases. Always.

01

Discovery

1–2 weeks. Audit, listen, scope.

02

Design

2–4 weeks. Prototypes you can click.

03

Build

6–16 weeks. Two-week cadences.

04

Stewardship

Ongoing. Continuity beats handoff.

04 — Common questions

Frequently Asked Questions

How much do IT consulting services cost?

A focused strategy or architecture review runs $15,000–$60,000 for a two-to-five-week engagement. A virtual CIO / CTO retainer starts at $6,000 per month for fractional senior leadership. Technical due diligence is $20,000–$75,000 per target. We price by the value of the decision you are making, not by billable-hour padding — and we tell you the range up front.

What is the difference between IT consulting and a virtual CIO / CTO?

IT consulting is typically a defined engagement around a specific question — a platform choice, an architecture review, a transformation plan — with a start and an end. A virtual CIO / CTO is ongoing fractional leadership: someone who owns your technology strategy, reports to your board, makes the recurring decisions, and grows with the business. Many clients start with a consulting engagement and continue into fractional leadership.

Do I need a fractional CTO if I already have engineers?

Often, yes. Great engineers are not the same as senior technology leadership. A fractional CTO sets strategy, makes architecture and build-vs-buy calls, reports credibly to your board and investors, plans hiring, and owns the technical risk — so your engineers can focus on building rather than guessing at direction. It is leadership your team may be missing even when the engineering is strong.

Are your recommendations independent, or do you resell products?

Fully independent. We hold no reseller relationships and take no vendor kickbacks, so our recommendations are shaped only by what is right for you. When we recommend a platform or partner, it is because it fits — not because it pays us a commission. We will also tell you honestly when you do not need the expensive option at all.

Can you also build what you recommend?

Yes — and that is a real advantage. We are a delivery studio as well as an advisory one: web, mobile, AI, cloud, infrastructure, and security under one roof. So our strategy is grounded in what delivery actually costs and takes, and when you want the roadmap executed, the same senior team can do it. You are also free to take the plan and have your own team run it — we design for that.

Do you provide technical due diligence for investors?

Yes. We assess a target's codebase quality, architecture, scalability, security posture, technical debt, key-person risk, and team capability, then deliver a clear written report with a risk rating and the questions you should ask before the deal closes. We work to investor timelines and keep findings practical — what is fine, what needs fixing, and what should affect the price.

How quickly can you give us a useful point of view?

Weeks, not months. Because our consultants are practitioners, we move fast — a focused strategy or architecture review delivers a concrete point of view in two to five weeks, and even a single advisory session can unblock a stuck decision. We do not run a multi-month discovery phase that bills heavily before saying anything actionable.

Will the strategy be something we can actually execute?

Yes — that is the whole point. Every engagement ends with a concrete, sequenced plan: what to do, in what order, by whom, at what cost, and why. Quick wins are separated from long bets, trade-offs are made explicit, and the plan is owned by your team. We deliver decisions and roadmaps you can act on Monday morning, not a strategy document that gets read once and shelved.

Ready to start?

Tell us about your project. We reply within one business day.

Start your project

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