Enterprise cloud with 60+ region availability
We architect, migrate, and operate Azure environments for enterprises that need production-grade reliability, security, and cost control. From landing zones to AKS at scale, our Azure-certified engineers deliver infrastructure that passes audit and performs under pressure.
Microsoft Azure is the enterprise cloud platform of choice for organizations that demand regulatory compliance, hybrid connectivity, and a mature identity layer. With 60+ regions, Azure provides geographic coverage that meets data residency requirements across every major jurisdiction. Azure Arc extends the management plane to on-premises and multi-cloud resources, AKS delivers managed Kubernetes with deep Azure AD integration, and Entra ID provides the zero-trust identity foundation that modern security architectures require. For teams already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, Azure offers first-class integration with Active Directory, Microsoft 365, and the Power Platform.
CloudForge approaches Azure differently from typical managed service providers. We do not just configure resources in a portal — we architect for governance, cost control, and operational excellence from day one. Every engagement starts with a Cloud Adoption Framework assessment, producing a landing zone architecture that includes management group hierarchies, Azure Policy guardrails, subscription vending, and identity federation. Our engineers work in Terraform and Bicep, version-controlling every resource and enforcing drift detection through CI pipelines. The goal is infrastructure that any engineer on your team can understand, audit, and extend.
Our Azure practice covers the full spectrum of enterprise-grade patterns: hub-spoke and Azure Virtual WAN networking topologies, conditional access and Privileged Identity Management for zero-trust identity, Defender for Cloud with Secure Score tracking for continuous security posture management, and Azure Cost Management with reservation optimization and budget alerts. We have delivered landing zones for financial services firms under PCI-DSS, healthcare organizations under HIPAA, and government agencies under FedRAMP — each with automated compliance evidence generation baked into the infrastructure.
Enterprise-scale landing zones with hub-spoke networking, policy guardrails, and identity federation.
End-to-end delivery pipelines with gated releases, environment approvals, and artifact management.
Production AKS clusters with auto-scaling, pod identity, and Azure CNI networking.
Zero-trust identity with conditional access, PIM, and cross-tenant B2B collaboration.
Reserved instances, right-sizing, and automated cost anomaly detection across subscriptions.
Unified management plane for on-prem, edge, and multi-cloud resources through Azure Arc.
Central hub VNet hosts shared services (firewall, DNS, bastion) while spoke VNets contain workloads with peering connections. Azure Firewall provides centralized egress control. Network Security Groups enforce micro-segmentation within spokes.
Organizations with 3+ workload environments that need centralized network security, shared services, and clear network segmentation with controlled inter-spoke traffic.
Management group hierarchy with Policy assignments at each level — platform, connectivity, identity, and application landing zones. Subscription vending automates new workload onboarding with pre-configured guardrails, networking, and RBAC.
Enterprises with 10+ teams, multiple subscriptions, and regulatory requirements that demand consistent governance across all Azure workloads.
Multiple AKS clusters across Azure regions behind Azure Front Door for global load balancing. Each cluster runs identical workloads with region-specific configuration overlays. ArgoCD manages cross-cluster GitOps deployment.
Applications requiring sub-100ms latency globally, active-active high availability, or regulatory requirements for data processing in specific regions.
YAML-defined pipelines with environment approvals, variable groups scoped per stage, and artifact promotion across dev, staging, and production. Service connections use workload identity federation — no stored secrets.
Teams needing auditable, repeatable deployments with manual approval gates for production and compliance-friendly pipeline definitions stored in Git.
Azure Arc projects on-premises servers, Kubernetes clusters, and SQL instances into the Azure control plane. Azure Policy, Monitor, and Defender extend to Arc-enabled resources. GitOps configurations deploy consistently across cloud and edge.
Organizations with significant on-premises infrastructure that want unified management, consistent policy enforcement, and a gradual migration path to Azure.
Management group hierarchy (Tenant Root → Platform → Landing Zones → Decommissioned) with Azure Policy initiatives assigned at each level. Platform subscriptions handle identity (Entra ID Connect), connectivity (hub VNet, ExpressRoute/VPN gateways), and management (Log Analytics, Automation). RBAC inheritance flows downward with break-glass exemptions. Subscription vending via Terraform module automates workload onboarding with pre-wired networking, diagnostics, and tagging policies.
Start with the Cloud Adoption Framework enterprise-scale reference implementation — never build a custom management group hierarchy from scratch. The CAF pattern has been validated across thousands of enterprise deployments and handles edge cases that custom designs miss.
Azure CNI Overlay for pod networking with Cilium for NetworkPolicy enforcement. Azure AD workload identity replaces pod-managed identity with federated token exchange. Defender for Containers provides runtime threat detection. Private clusters with API server VNet integration eliminate public endpoint exposure. Node pool isolation separates system and user workloads with taints and tolerations.
Use workload identity federation with managed identities — never service principal secrets in pods. Service principals require secret rotation and create operational toil; managed identities are automatically rotated by the platform and scoped to specific Azure resources.
Azure Advisor provides reservation and right-sizing recommendations with projected savings. Cost Management budgets trigger action groups at 80%, 100%, and 120% thresholds. Azure Savings Plans cover dynamic compute across regions and SKUs. Cost allocation rules distribute shared costs (hub networking, monitoring) to application teams based on usage tags.
Tag everything and enforce tagging with Azure Policy — deny deployments without required cost-center, environment, and owner tags. Untagged resources are invisible to cost allocation and become organizational debt that compounds monthly.
Conditional Access policies evaluate user risk, device compliance, location, and application sensitivity for every authentication. Privileged Identity Management enforces just-in-time activation for admin roles with approval workflows and time-bounded access. Continuous Access Evaluation revokes sessions within minutes when user risk changes. Cross-tenant access settings control B2B collaboration at the policy level.
Default to least privilege with Entra PIM for all privileged roles — no standing admin access. Maintain at least two break-glass accounts excluded from conditional access, stored in a physical safe, with sign-in activity monitored by alerts that fire within 5 minutes.
YAML multi-stage pipelines with template references for DRY pipeline definitions. Variable groups with Azure Key Vault backing for secret management. Service connections use workload identity federation for passwordless Azure authentication. Environments define approval gates, exclusive locks, and deployment history. Deployment jobs support rolling, canary, and blue-green strategies natively.
Require environment approvals for production deployments with a minimum of two reviewers. Use pipeline templates stored in a shared repository to enforce organizational standards — individual teams extend templates but cannot bypass required stages like security scanning and compliance checks.
Root module that provisions the management group hierarchy, subscription vending, and policy assignments. The module accepts a YAML-based configuration for management groups (platform, landing-zones, sandbox, decommissioned) and iterates over policy initiative definitions. Each landing zone subscription gets a pre-configured hub-spoke peering, diagnostic settings forwarding to the central Log Analytics workspace, and RBAC role assignments for the owning team. Policy assignments enforce allowed regions, required tags, and prohibited resource types at the management group level.
# Root module structure: # ├── main.tf — management group hierarchy # ├── policy_assignments.tf — initiative assignments per MG level # ├── connectivity.tf — hub VNet, Azure Firewall, VPN/ER gateways # ├── identity.tf — Entra ID Connect, PIM configuration # ├── modules/ # │ ├── subscription-vending/ — new subscription provisioning # │ ├── hub-spoke-peering/ — VNet peering with routing # │ └── diagnostics/ — Log Analytics and diagnostic settings # └── config/ # └── landing-zones.yaml — declarative LZ definitions
ArgoCD ApplicationSet using a Git directory generator to deploy workloads across multiple AKS clusters. Each cluster has a values overlay directory containing environment-specific configuration (replica counts, resource limits, ingress hostnames, managed identity client IDs). The ApplicationSet template references a shared Helm chart with the cluster-specific values file. Sync waves ensure infrastructure components (namespaces, secrets, config maps) deploy before application workloads. Health checks gate promotion between environments.
# Repository structure: # ├── clusters/ # │ ├── aks-westeurope-prod/ — values-prod-we.yaml # │ ├── aks-northeurope-prod/ — values-prod-ne.yaml # │ └── aks-westeurope-dev/ — values-dev-we.yaml # ├── charts/ # │ └── microservice/ — shared Helm chart # └── applicationsets/ # └── multi-cluster.yaml — ApplicationSet definition
Multi-stage pipeline with build, test, staging, and production stages. The build stage compiles, runs unit tests, and publishes artifacts. Staging deploys via Helm with a rolling strategy and runs integration tests. Production requires manual approval from two reviewers, deploys with a canary strategy (10% → 50% → 100%), and includes automated rollback triggers based on Azure Monitor alert rules. Each stage uses variable groups backed by Key Vault for environment-specific secrets.
# Pipeline stages: # ┌─────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌─────────────┐ ┌────────────┐ # │ Build │───>│ Test │───>│ Staging │───>│ Production │ # └─────────┘ └──────────┘ └─────────────┘ └────────────┘ # compile unit + lint deploy + e2e approval gate # publish SAST scan smoke tests canary 10/50/100 # artifact SCA scan perf baseline rollback triggers
Phased migration of legacy workloads with zero downtime using Azure Migrate and Site Recovery.
Active-active deployments across Azure regions with Traffic Manager and geo-replicated data stores.
Conditional access, micro-segmentation, and continuous compliance monitoring with Defender for Cloud.
Multi-cluster AKS with GitOps, pod autoscaling, and integrated monitoring for containerized workloads.
340+ services running across 3 aging data centers with manual deployment processes, inconsistent security policies, and no centralized governance. Compliance audits required 6 weeks of manual evidence gathering per quarter.
Designed and deployed an Azure enterprise-scale landing zone with hub-spoke networking across West Europe and North Europe regions. Migrated all services to AKS multi-cluster with ArgoCD GitOps. Implemented PCI-DSS controls as Azure Policy assignments with automated compliance evidence export.
“CloudForge did not just migrate our infrastructure — they transformed how we think about cloud governance. For the first time, our compliance team can pull audit evidence in real-time instead of chasing engineers for screenshots.”
— VP of Infrastructure, European Financial Services Firm
Our Azure practice is built on 14 active certifications spanning Solutions Architect Expert, DevOps Engineer Expert, Security Engineer, and Administrator. Every engagement is led by a Solutions Architect Expert-certified engineer who has designed and delivered enterprise-scale landing zones, not just passed an exam. We have completed over 200 Azure migrations ranging from lift-and-shift of legacy Windows Server workloads to full re-architecture of distributed systems on AKS with managed identities and policy-driven governance.
What sets us apart from typical Azure MSPs is our infrastructure-as-code-first approach. We do not click through portals — every resource is defined in Terraform or Bicep, stored in Git, and deployed through CI/CD pipelines. This means your Azure environment is auditable, reproducible, and version-controlled from day one. When your auditor asks "who changed this firewall rule and when," we can answer with a Git commit, not a portal activity log.
We operate as embedded engineers, not external consultants who hand over a design document and leave. Our team joins your Slack, attends your standups, and pairs with your engineers on real infrastructure problems. By the time we complete an engagement, your team has the skills and confidence to operate the platform independently. We measure success by how quickly your team stops needing us — not by how many billable hours we can extend.
Microsoft's official framework covering reliability, security, cost optimization, operational excellence, and performance efficiency. The foundation for every Azure architecture review.
Microsoft's production-ready AKS reference architecture with Azure AD workload identity, Azure CNI, and Azure Policy. The starting point for any serious AKS deployment.
Terraform and Bicep modules implementing the Cloud Adoption Framework enterprise-scale landing zone. Fork it, customize it, deploy it — do not build your own from scratch.
Practical guide to Azure Reservations, Savings Plans, right-sizing, and cost allocation. Required reading before any FinOps initiative on Azure.
Our certified engineers are ready to design, build, and operate Microsoft Azure solutions tailored to your technical requirements.
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