Cloud & DevOps Company in Bristol

Bristol platform work prices off the shape of the workload, because regulated, media-heavy, and compute-heavy estates each pull a different design: a landing-zone build for a Series A to Series B Bristol fintech, microelectronics, or media company over six to ten weeks, a Kubernetes platform build (EKS or AKS, ArgoCD, observability, policy) over twelve to twenty weeks, an aerospace or defence supplier landing zone with BS 7858 and ITAR controls, a media pipeline (MediaConvert, MediaPackage, CDN strategy, MAM integration) for Aardman or Channel 4 scale, or an HPC grid for Graphcore-style IPU workloads or XMOS silicon emulation. Retainer SRE is scoped separately for business-hours or 24x7 cover. Fixed-fee against deliverables.

Yes. Engineers assigned to Airbus Filton, Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems, GKN Aerospace, and MoD Abbey Wood DE&S-adjacent workloads carry BS 7858 personnel screening, processed through Sterling or HireRight. Our internal ISMS is certified to Cyber Essentials Plus, audited annually by an IASME-licensed certification body. For client workloads, we design landing zones against the Cyber Essentials Plus technical controls (firewall, secure configuration, user access control, malware protection, security update management) and produce evidence the IASME assessor accepts. For DE&S contracts requiring List X-cleared subcontractors, we coordinate with security-cleared partners and project-manage the access requirements end-to-end.

Yes. Bristol aerospace and defence clients working with US partners often handle ITAR-controlled technical data (USML categories) and UK Export Control Joint Unit-controlled dual-use items. We architect with explicit data classification, AWS GovCloud (US) or Azure Government federation when US persons access is required, Service Control Policies and Azure Policy denying replication to non-permitted regions, AWS KMS or Azure Key Vault HSM-backed keys with audit-logged access, and an attestation trail the ECJU and US BIS reviewers can audit. We do not pretend ITAR is a checkbox: it requires architectural choices made at landing-zone build time, and we have shipped those architectures for Airbus and Rolls-Royce-adjacent suppliers.

FinOps is a first-class deliverable. From day one we enforce a tagging taxonomy (cost centre, environment, owner, data classification, regulatory tier) via SCPs or Azure Policy, route all spend through Cost Anomaly Detection or Azure Cost Management with Slack alerts, and produce a monthly unit-cost report (per customer, per render-minute, per regression run, per inference call depending on workload). Reserved Instances and Savings Plans get modelled quarterly against actual usage. For media clients, we model per-second-of-output transcode economics; for HPC clients, per-regression-run; for fintech, per-active-customer. Bristol CFOs see a clear unit economics story, not a 40-page AWS invoice with a single Slack message of explanation.

Yes. Aardman, Channel 4, BBC NHU, and Bristol-based production companies have shipped on our pipelines using AWS MediaConvert for transcode, MediaPackage for packaging, MediaTailor for ad insertion, CloudFront with origin shield for delivery, and S3 Intelligent-Tiering plus Glacier Instant Retrieval for archive. Live workflows use AWS Elemental MediaLive or Azure Media Services Live. MAM integrations connect Avid MediaCentral, Vidispine, or Iconik. For BBC and Channel 4 editorial workflows, we handle DPP AS-11 file conformance, IMF for studio-grade master delivery, and EBU-R128 loudness compliance. Asset rights and licensing data carry through the pipeline as metadata so editorial teams can enforce blackout windows and territory restrictions.

Graphcore IPU workloads run on Graphcloud or partner-hosted IPU Pods with hybrid orchestration into AWS or Azure for data and control plane. XMOS silicon-emulation and FPGA workloads use AWS F1 instances or bare-metal F2 with FlexLM licence-aware Slurm scheduling. For aerospace EDA workloads (Synopsys, Cadence, Siemens Questa) at Bristol clients in the GKN or Airbus supply chain, we run AWS ParallelCluster or Azure CycleCloud with FSx for Lustre scratch storage, EC2 Spot or Azure Low Priority for cost, and licence-server architecture (FlexLM, Reprise) deployed in HA pairs. Burst-from-on-prem patterns are supported via AWS Direct Connect or Azure ExpressRoute with VPN failover.

Sixteen to twenty-eight weeks for a typical Bristol fintech, microelectronics, or media company. Weeks 1 to 4 cover discovery, landing-zone build, and wave plan. Weeks 5 to 16 cover wave-by-wave migration using AWS Application Migration Service or Azure Migrate, with refactoring of high-value workloads to managed services. Weeks 17 to 24 cover cutover, decommissioning, and FinOps optimisation. Aerospace or defence workloads with BS 7858 and ITAR scope add four to eight weeks for security validation and supplier assurance review. Media archive migrations with petabyte-scale tape libraries add a separate Snowmobile or AWS Snowcone wave. We do not promise 90-day migrations because the regulatory and FinOps cleanup work makes that an empty win.

Yes, but it is optional, not mandatory. After build we run a 30-day operate-then-handover window where our SREs run the platform with your team shadowing, then your team runs it with us shadowing. After that, you choose: take it fully in-house with our documentation and Slack-channel office hours, or sign a retainer for on-call coverage. Retainers are scoped monthly, either for business-hours coverage (GMT working hours) or for a 24x7 follow-the-sun rotation coordinated across Edmonton, Chandigarh, and Bristol. Quarterly DORA reports measure deployment frequency, lead time, change-failure rate, and mean time to recovery against industry benchmarks for your stage.