Fractional IT consulting
Enterprise IT engineering, delivered using multiple disciplines.
L&A Technical Advisory serves mid-market and enterprise organizations with twenty-five years of enterprise engineering in banking, federal, logistics, retail, healthcare and SaaS — delivered inside those organizations rather than advised on from outside them. The principal who scopes an engagement is the one who performs it.
Who the work is for
Three roles, usually in the same room.
At 800 users or at 30,000, the same small group carries the decision, and rarely with a dedicated function behind any one of them. An engagement has to satisfy all three concurrently.
IT and infrastructure leaders
An estate that has grown incrementally through acquisition, turnover and deferred upgrades, operated by a team with no spare capacity. The requirement is senior engineering capability on the difficult work without adding a permanent position.
Security and identity leads
An access model designed for a perimeter that no longer exists, now receiving requests from AI systems and third parties acting on behalf of users. The requirement is identity re-established as the control plane, sequenced so that operations continue throughout.
Executives without a CIO
Technology decisions arriving at an executive who was not hired to make them, with the next one carrying material cost. The requirement is independent senior judgment on sequencing, cost and risk before a vendor narrows the available options.
What the practice covers
Six competencies, one practitioner.
Each competency stands alone and organizations engage them separately. They are not practiced apart: an identity problem presents at the service desk, an AI rollout stalls on a directory of uncertain accuracy, an audit finding resolves to an infrastructure decision taken years earlier.
Infrastructure Engineering
Directory, virtualization, storage, backup and recovery: the foundation every other initiative depends on. Assessed, modernized and documented so subsequent programs are built on a known baseline.
DeliverableA current-state assessment, a prioritized remediation plan, and documented standards.
What this coversIdentity & Access Management
Identity as the control plane: directory and lifecycle governance, conditional and privileged access, PKI, and segmentation derived from the identity of the requester rather than from network location.
DeliverableAn access model, a policy set and a phased rollout plan.
What this coversCybersecurity Engineering
Baseline hardening, segmentation, vulnerability management and incident response readiness: the controls that operate independently of access decisions, and the evidence required to demonstrate them.
DeliverableA hardened baseline, documented vulnerability and incident response processes, and the evidence supporting both.
What this coversService Delivery & IT Operations
ITIL-based operations: a service catalog aligned to how work is actually requested, accurate runbooks, proportionate change and incident discipline, and metrics that indicate whether the function is performing.
DeliverableA service catalog, documented runbooks, and an operating cadence supported by metrics.
What this coversAI Adoption & Governance
Establishing AI in production use with data and access governance intact: workload placement, authorization to build, and the review a new tool must clear before it reaches production data.
DeliverableA reference architecture, an intake and approval framework, and a rollout plan.
What this coversCloud Engineering
Azure and AWS environments designed to be operated: landing zones, identity integration, automation and CI/CD, including the regulated and government cloud environments where the compliance boundary forms part of the design.
DeliverableA landing zone design, automation pipelines, and an operating handover.
What this covers
How an engagement runs
Four phases, and a defined end to each one.
No open-ended retainer. Each phase produces a written output the client team owns and can act on independently, and closes at a decision gate where the engagement can stop.
Selected work
Identity was the smallest change on the list, and the one that unblocked everything else.
Start with an assessment, not a tool selection.
Where AI is the question in front of the organization, the AI Readiness Assessment is the appropriate starting point: a documented account of the environment, the gaps and the sequencing, independent of any vendor. Where the question falls under one of the other five competencies, an equivalent assessment can be scoped.