Middleware estate run
agreed SLA tier, named on-call, monthly service report.
Managed operations
A system with someone accountable.
Ongoing operation of an agreed estate, with service levels, escalation paths, named responsibilities and monthly reporting defined in the contract.
How the work starts
Define the problem
Share the system, the decision or incident, and the constraints.
Agree who and what
Review the proposed practitioner or team, scope, rate, availability and acceptance criteria.
Work with visibility
Agree your tooling, reporting cadence, access and decision owner.
Leave with a handover
Keep the agreed deliverables, decisions and next steps in your own environment.
How planning and review differ
Planning
Assess the estate first; then agree coverage, escalation, exclusions and reporting.
Customer involvement
Name contacts for escalation and change approval within the agreed authority.
Handover
Monthly service evidence and an improvement backlog; exit terms cover runbook transfer.
Published service tiers
| Guard | Operate | Own | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coverage | Business hours, your timezone | Extended, 07:00–23:00 | 24/7 follow-the-sun |
| P1 response | 4 hours | 1 hour | 15 minutes |
| P1 resolution target | Next business day | 8 hours | 4 hours |
| Named on-call engineers | 1 | 2 | 3+ rota |
| Patching | Monthly window | Fortnightly | Weekly + emergency |
| Backup & DR | Verified monthly | Verified fortnightly, annual DR test | Verified weekly, semi-annual DR test |
| Cost review | Quarterly | Monthly | Monthly + anomaly alerts |
| Service report | Monthly | Monthly + quarterly review | Monthly + quarterly business review |
| From | $1,900/month | $4,000/month | $8,000/month |
Indicative monthly fees for a mid-size estate. Final tier pricing follows an estate assessment.
Scope boundaries
What a tier does not cover. New feature development, migrations and re-architecture are scoped separately as sprints or squads. Coverage hours, response and resolution targets in the table are indicative for a mid-size estate and become contractual only after an estate assessment and written agreement — they are not a standing guarantee of 24/7 coverage for every enquiry. We will not accept an Own (24/7) tier on an estate we have not assessed.
Work we take on
Example engagement — illustrative. Typical scopes of work, not named client case studies.
Cloud platform managed
patching, backup verification, incident and cost governance to a tier.
Data platform operated
pipeline monitoring, freshness SLAs and failure response with an owner.
Observability run
alert quality maintained, on-call supported, recurrence reported.
Out-of-hours cover only
defined coverage outside your team's hours, with your engineers as escalation.
Start with clarity.
What would make your business easier to run?
Tell us the operational challenge. We will discuss whether a short conversation, a scoped assessment or a delivery engagement is the right next step.