// Tech Consulting & Advisory
We partner with CIOs and infrastructure leaders at $100M+ enterprises on the decisions made once every five to seven years and live with for a decade. Multi-vendor strategy. TCO optimization. EOSL navigation. Refresh sequencing. Independent. Senior-led. Fee-based, never commissioned.
// Why this practice exists
Most "infrastructure consulting" arrives with constraints the buyer doesn't see at the engagement letter. We exist to solve for the cases where those constraints would have changed the answer.
Conflict 1
The advisor recommending your refresh path is paid by Dell, Cisco, HPE, or NetApp on the back end. Their incentive isn't bad architecture — but it isn't your architecture either. It's the architecture that closes the deal whose commission they're earning.
Conflict 2
Resellers offer free assessments because the assessment is a vehicle to a hardware order. The deliverable looks like advice; the underlying economics are quota and margin. Useful for some decisions. Not for the ones that should constrain a reseller's selection.
Conflict 3
Excellent for governance and process. Constrained on the technical specifics that determine whether a refresh actually delivers the modeled TCO. The team that writes the strategy memo is rarely the team that has touched a current-generation array on a Friday at 2 AM.
Conflict 4
Your own team is closest to the data and furthest from the consequences. They know what works today; they're rarely positioned to model what works under a stack their CFO has only seen presented by a vendor. Independent eyes change which questions get asked.
// How we engage
Every engagement is fee-based and scoped before it starts. We do not work on success fees. We do not work for vendor commissions. We do not introduce hardware orders into engagement deliverables.
Tier 1
4 to 8 weeks
A specific decision is on your desk and the answer matters. Refresh-versus-extend. Consolidate-versus-status-quo. Hyperconverged-versus-traditional. We bring senior-level infrastructure judgment, build the model, and deliver a written memo plus an executive briefing.
Tier 2
12 months minimum
You want a senior strategic partner on call. Quarterly architecture reviews. Pre-RFP scoping support. Vendor-side contract review before signature. On-call advisory for the questions that don't fit a project. The relationship is the deliverable.
Tier 3
6 to 18 months
A major migration is in flight and your leadership wants independent eyes alongside the implementation team. We sit between the program and the executive sponsor: milestone validation, risk surfacing, vendor escalation support, honest status reporting.
// Practice areas
Five domains where independent senior judgment changes the answer. We don't claim coverage outside these. The boundary is intentional.
01
Multi-vendor reduction analysis. Anniversary alignment. Master agreement architecture. Reverse-engineering OEM negotiation positions before you sit down at the table.
02
Three-to-five-year TCO modeling against the actual structure your CFO uses. Refresh-versus-extend. Buy-versus-lease. On-prem-versus-hybrid economics, costed in your spreadsheet, not ours.
03
Inventory of end-of-service-life exposure across your estate. Transition planning. Parallel-running design. The risk inventory most teams haven't compiled because no one is paid to surface it.
04
Hyperconverged versus traditional. On-prem versus hybrid. Capacity planning grounded in your actual workload mix, not a vendor's reference architecture deck.
05
RFP design. Vendor scoring. Negotiation support. Reading what's missing from a vendor proposal as carefully as what's in it. Working with — never around — your procurement team.
// What independence actually means
Independence is structural, not a brand promise. The principles below are how we run the practice, costed into our fees, never bypassed.
WUC's advisory practice does not earn commission on hardware, software, or service orders that result from advisory engagements. The wall between advisory revenue and product revenue is hard, audited, and disclosed in every engagement letter.
We do not introduce, recommend, or quote software products as part of advisory deliverables where WUC holds reseller economics. If your decision needs software analysis, we name the products you should evaluate — not the products we'd be paid to place.
The senior advisor signing the engagement letter is the senior advisor doing the work. We don't run a "partner sells, manager builds, analyst writes" pyramid. If a senior person is named on the proposal, they are on the engagement, present at the executive briefing, and accountable to the deliverable.
If at any point during an engagement we determine WUC is not the right firm for the question — wrong domain, conflicted, or the situation has moved beyond our scope — we say so in writing and refund the unconsumed retainer. We've done it. It's not a story, it's a policy.
// How we think
Most consulting firms have a methodology. Few have one specific to infrastructure with this much vendor depth. Below is what we actually use — and where we're honest about not going.
Decision framework
Long · Cheap to reverse
Multiple feasible paths. Decision points spaced. We map the scenario tree, model the exit ramps, commit only when forced. Tier 2 retainer fits well here.
Long · Expensive to reverse
Datacenter refresh. Multi-vendor consolidation. Hyperconverged migration. The hard ones. Three-to-five-year TCO modeled in your CFO's spreadsheet structure, EOSL windows costed, vendor-side leverage mapped. Tier 1 + Tier 3 oversight.
Quick · Cheap to reverse
The decision is small enough that running it both ways teaches more than analyzing it. We design the pilot, scope the metrics, deliver the post-mortem — or refer you to your team if a consultant is overkill.
Quick · Expensive to reverse
Pressure to move fast on a decision that will be hard to undo. We force the pre-mortem most teams skip, and we write the reversal cost into the engagement letter so the decision is made with eyes open.
Capability depth
Coverage breadth is rarely the differentiator. Coverage depth at the right things is. Bars below are calibrated honestly: full-depth on the practice anchors, working depth on adjacencies, and explicit refer-outs where we're not the right firm.
// Refer-out is not weakness. It's how a discipline stays one. We name partner firms in adjacent domains when your situation calls for them.
// What buyers ask
45 minutes with a senior advisor. Bring the decision you're working through, the constraints you're operating against, and the question your current vendors won't answer cleanly. We'll tell you honestly whether a WUC engagement is the right move — and if it isn't, who would be.
// 45-minute call · No obligation · No follow-up sequence unless you ask for one