Service · Azure Well-Architected Review
A fixed-scope review of your Azure workloads against the five pillars of the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework: cost optimization, operational excellence, performance efficiency, reliability, and security. You get a written, pillar-by-pillar scorecard and a prioritized remediation backlog you can act on, or hand to your board.
Read-only access. No remediation lock-in. The scorecard is yours regardless of what you do next.
Why a review, not a hunch
Most mission-driven organizations on Azure got there one workload at a time: a website here, a line-of-business application there, a data platform a contractor stood up two years ago, maybe a custom AI workload that went live faster than anyone planned. Each piece works. Nobody has stepped back to ask whether the whole environment is built well.
The questions pile up at the worst moments. The Azure bill climbs and nobody can say which workload is responsible. An auditor asks how data is protected and the honest answer is “we think it’s fine.” A funder asks about reliability and disaster recovery. Something goes down and the recovery plan turns out to be a hope rather than a tested procedure.
Microsoft publishes the answer to all of this: the Azure Well-Architected Framework, a structured set of best practices across five pillars. The Well-Architected Review measures your environment against that framework and tells you, in writing, exactly where you stand and what to fix first, ranked by impact and effort.
It is the same review Microsoft asks its partners to run. We run it with an outside, accountable perspective, so the findings carry weight with your board and your funders, not just your IT team.
The framework
We assess each workload in scope against all five pillars of the Azure Well-Architected Framework, then score where you stand and where the gaps are.
Pillar 01
Where the money goes, and where it’s wasted. Over-provisioned resources, idle capacity, the wrong pricing tiers, missing reservations and savings plans, and orphaned resources nobody owns. We tie spend back to workloads so you can defend the bill, or cut it.
Pillar 02
How the environment is run day to day. Monitoring and alerting coverage, deployment practices, infrastructure as code, documentation, and the manual steps that should be automated before they fail at the wrong moment.
Pillar 03
Whether the workloads are sized for the job. Right-sizing, scaling behavior under load, data and storage choices, and the bottlenecks that show up as a slow site or a stalled report when it matters most.
Pillar 04
What happens when something breaks. Redundancy, backup and restore, disaster-recovery design, and recovery objectives. We test whether the recovery plan is a tested procedure or a hope, because the difference only shows up during an outage.
Pillar 05
Whether the environment can stand up to scrutiny. Identity and access, network exposure, data protection and encryption, secrets management, and the posture an auditor, an insurer, or a funder will ask about.
Tailored
The standard Review covers all five pillars. If you only need one, security or cost optimization most often, we can scope a focused single-pillar review at a reduced price. Ask on the scoping call.
What you get
Written in language a board, a funder, or an auditor can act on, not a wall of raw tool output. All three are yours regardless of what you do next.
Deliverable 01
A clear rating for each of the five pillars, with the evidence behind it. You see exactly where the environment is strong, where it’s exposed, and how it compares to the Well-Architected Framework’s best practices. The page your board has been asking for.
Deliverable 02
Every finding written up as a specific, actionable recommendation, ranked by impact and effort. Quick wins are flagged so you can act this week; larger items are scoped so you can budget for them. Each item names the pillar it serves and the risk of leaving it.
Deliverable 03
A 60-minute session with leadership and whoever owns the Azure budget. We walk the scorecard, defend the priorities, and answer the “what does this cost us if we wait” question for each major finding. Recording and slides included.
All three deliverables are yours regardless of what you do next. There is no obligation to engage Centered Networks for the remediation.
How it works
A kickoff call, read-only access to your environment, and a few clarifying conversations. We do the assessment; you get the readout.
01
Week 1
A kickoff call to confirm which subscriptions and workloads are in scope and what each is for. You grant read-only access. We collect configuration, cost, and telemetry data across the environment, no production changes, no contributor rights.
02
Weeks 1–2
We assess every workload in scope against all five pillars, combining Azure’s own assessment tooling with a senior architect’s review. Findings are scored, ranked by impact and effort, and written up as specific recommendations.
03
Weeks 2–3
You receive the written scorecard and prioritized backlog, then we present them in a 60-minute executive readout. Findings, priorities, and the cost of waiting, defended in person. The decision on what to do next is yours.
At a glance
One flat fee. No per-hour surprises. The scorecard is yours.
$7,000flat, one-time · full five-pillar Review
What happens after
The Review is the project. Remediation can run as a scoped project or a managed service we operate. The fee is credited either way.
If you want us to run it for you
Hand the backlog to a managed service. We operate the environment against the Well-Architected pillars on an ongoing basis: monitoring, cost discipline, reliability, and security, managed month to month.
See CompleteCare →If the work is a defined build
When the backlog points to re-architecting or building custom Azure applications the right way, Construct delivers it as a scoped project, with infrastructure as code and the pillars designed in from the start.
See CompleteCare Construct →If cost is the headline finding
When the biggest wins are in cost optimization, we right-size, re-tier, and put ongoing cost governance in place so the savings hold instead of creeping back.
See the Cloud pillar →If security is the priority
When the security pillar surfaces real exposure, our 24/7 managed SOC on Microsoft Sentinel closes the gap and keeps it closed, with monitoring and response you can show an auditor.
See Managed SOC →We build what we recommend
We built the National Mall Gateway, the digital civic education platform for America’s 250th anniversary, on Microsoft Azure for the Trust for the National Mall. The platform serves 360-degree virtual tours, lesson plans, custom itineraries, and accessibility-first features to an expected 50 million visitors during 2026. We developed a custom generative AI model in Microsoft Foundry to draft educational resources from vetted National Park Service content, and built the infrastructure with Terraform for near-instant disaster recovery. The project is featured as a Microsoft Customer Story.
Cost, operations, performance, reliability, security: the same five pillars we score in your Review are the ones we designed this platform against. We assess your environment the way we build our own.
Questions
It is Microsoft’s published set of best practices for designing and running workloads on Azure, organized into five pillars: cost optimization, operational excellence, performance efficiency, reliability, and security. The Well-Architected Review measures your environment against those pillars and tells you, specifically, where you stand and what to fix first.
No. The Review is an assessment: it produces a written scorecard and a prioritized remediation backlog. Implementing the fixes is a separate engagement. Most organizations carry the backlog into a CompleteCare tier or a scoped Azure project, and the Review’s price is credited toward that work when you continue with us within 90 days.
Reader access to the Azure subscriptions in scope and Global Reader access to Microsoft Entra ID. Both are read-only. We never need contributor or owner rights to assess your environment, and we document exactly what we looked at.
Yes. The standard Review covers all five pillars for $7,000. If you only need a focused assessment, for example security or cost optimization, we can scope a single-pillar review at a reduced price. Most organizations get the most value from the full five-pillar picture, because the pillars trade off against one another.
Two to three weeks of calendar time from kickoff to the executive readout, depending on the number of subscriptions and the complexity of your workloads. Your team’s time commitment is light: a kickoff call, read-only access, and a few clarifying conversations.
Centered Networks holds the Microsoft Solutions Partner designations for Infrastructure (Azure), Data & AI (Azure), and Digital & App Innovation (Azure). We run the Well-Architected Review the way Microsoft intends it to be run, with an outside, accountable perspective, so the findings carry weight with your board and your funders, not just your IT team.
$7,000 flat. Two to three weeks. A written scorecard and a prioritized backlog your board can act on.
Tell us about your Azure environment. We’ll confirm scope, set up read-only access, and get the Review on the calendar. Chris or someone from the leadership team responds within one business day.
A senior member of our team will reach out within one business day to confirm scope and set up the Review.
Microsoft alignment
The Well-Architected Review is run by an architect against Microsoft’s own framework. Centered Networks holds five Microsoft Solutions Partner designations, including the three Azure designations that back this work.
