IT Consultancy Services
Three vendors, three answers, and each one sells the thing it just recommended.
That is the position most businesses are in when they call us. A system that is slow, a platform decision worth six figures, or a proposal that reads well and nobody in the building can evaluate. Everyone with an opinion has something to sell, so the honest answer is the one thing nobody is offering.
We sell no software. We resell nothing, take no commission and hold no partner status that pays us for a recommendation. What we sell is the hour, the review and the engineering that follows if you want it, which means the only way this works for us is if the advice turns out to be right.
IT consulting, IT consultancy, an independent second opinion: whatever it is called in your organisation, the work is the same. Decide what to keep, what to replace, what to build, and in what order, before the budget is committed. We are based in Maynooth and work with clients across Ireland, the UK and the United States.
What you leave with
- An independent view on your roadmap, vendors and priorities
- The two or three decisions that would make the biggest difference
- What to stop spending on
With a senior architect, not a salesperson. Sixty minutes, no cost, no obligation.
Where Businesses Bring Us In
- Choosing between platforms, vendors or build versus buy
- Reviewing a system that is slow, fragile or costing more each year
- Reading a supplier proposal nobody internally can judge
- Planning growth the current infrastructure will not carry
- Untangling systems that do not talk to each other
- Replacing manual processes and the spreadsheets holding them together
- Inheriting undocumented technology after a departure or an acquisition
- Setting a technology roadmap and a budget that survives contact with reality
Some of those are a conversation. Some are a two-week review. Some turn into a year of delivery work. We will tell you which one you have before you spend anything.
What You Actually Get From IT Consulting
The complaint we hear most about previous consultants is not that the advice was wrong. It is that nothing usable came out of it: a deck, a workshop, and a bill. What we hand over is meant to be acted on by whoever ends up doing the work, including a supplier who is not us.
A written recommendation
What to do, in what order, and what happens if you do nothing. In plain language, because it has to be read by the people holding the budget as well as the people holding the systems.
The reasoning, not just the answer
Why this option and not the other two, what we assumed, and what would change our mind. Advice you cannot interrogate is advice you cannot defend to a board.
Effort and risk, stated honestly
A realistic read on what each option costs in time and money, and where it is most likely to go wrong. Including the cases where the honest answer is that the cheapest move is to change a process rather than buy anything.
Something anyone can deliver
The recommendation is yours. Take it to your own team, to an existing supplier, or to us. We would rather be chosen at that point than assumed at the start.
Where the Work Goes Next
An IT consulting engagement rarely ends at the recommendation. These are the four practices the advice usually turns into, and any of them can be the whole engagement or none of it. The judgement about which one you need is the free hour, not a sales call.
AI and automation
The question we are asked most often now, and the one where independence matters most, because most of the advice available is being given by somebody selling a model or a platform. Where AI pays back and where it does not, agents that hold up in production rather than in a demo, and the automation of a process that actually costs you money.
AI readiness assessment, AI engineering, harness engineering, intelligent automation, data and knowledge platforms, MLOps and governance.
Cloud and platform
Choosing a provider, or living better with the one you have. Landing zones, networking, resilience and the cost work that makes a bill readable. Also the architecture underneath it: service boundaries, contracts and the integrations that keep breaking every release.
Cloud architecture, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, migration and modernisation, software architecture, API and systems integration, service-oriented architecture.
Design and build
When the recommendation is that something has to be built, extended or made to behave. New applications led by an architect, extensions to the platform you already own, and performance, cost and reliability work on systems that have to stay running while you fix them.
Application development, web development, software customisation, software integration, dedicated delivery pods, stability and optimisation.
Advisory and assurance
The independent reads. A fixed-scope evaluation before a decision that is too big to guess at, a process audit that maps what actually happens before anybody automates it, technical due diligence for an investment, and the standards work that a customer or an auditor is about to ask you for.
Advisory and evaluation programme, architecture review, business process audit, product and investment evaluation, standards and ISO readiness, digital transformation.
How We Work
1. Understand
We start with how the business actually operates: the processes, the systems, the workarounds, and where time and money are going. Not a vendor questionnaire.
2. Assess and prioritise
What genuinely needs to change, what can wait, and what should be left alone. Recommendations come with reasoning and realistic effort estimates.
3. Implement
Where you want us to deliver, we do: configuration, integration, custom development, migration. Where your own team is better placed, we support them.
4. Hand over properly
Documentation, knowledge transfer and a clear picture of what changed and why. You should not need us in order to keep running.
What It Costs, and How Engagements Are Structured
We do not publish a day rate, because the honest number depends on what is involved and we would rather quote something we can stand over. What we can be clear about is the shape, so nobody is surprised by the second conversation.
The first hour is free
You describe the problem, a practising architect asks the questions that matter, and you leave with a candid read and a short written summary. It is yours whichever way you go, and there is no obligation attached to it.
Book the free hour →A short review, fixed scope
Typically one to two weeks on a specific question: this platform or that one, why the system is slow, whether the proposal in front of you is sound. Agreed scope, agreed price, a written report at the end.
Architecture review →The evaluation programme
Four to six weeks of independent evaluation across architecture, process and cost, for a decision big enough to deserve it, ending in a report your board can read.
Advisory and evaluation →Delivery, if you want it
Where you would rather we built the thing we recommended, we do that too, on a budget you can see and stop. You are never required to, and the recommendation works just as well in somebody else's hands.
All services →The Thinking Behind the Advice
Most consultancies ask you to take their expertise on trust. Ours is published, in full, before you have spoken to anybody. Aitina Tech's R&D wing applies the research of The Software Lens and writes up how, and the architects who wrote those applied pages are the ones who turn up to the engagement.
Why integration keeps breaking
Two long pieces on why the established integration patterns fail when the caller is an AI agent, and the six mistakes we see most often, worked through in higher education and in payments.
Read Part 2 →Software as a capability
What changes when you stop buying applications and counting seats, and start hiring capabilities that carry their own contract, permissions and evidence.
Read the SaaC piece →How a company keeps what it learns
The OKL framework: objectives, knowledge and learning, and why a business that measures only progress keeps re-learning the same lesson at the same price.
Read the OKL research →Putting a model into production safely
The harness around an AI feature: the contracts, guardrails, receipts and the off switch that decide whether an assistant is safe to point at a real system.
Harness engineering →You can read all of it before you hire anybody. That is the point of publishing it.
Why Aitina Tech
Engineers, not just advisers
The people who give the advice build the systems as well. Advice that cannot be implemented is not advice we give, and we find out quickly when we are wrong.
Independent of every vendor
Not a reseller, no commission, no referral fees, no partner tier that pays us to prefer a platform. If the right answer is a product we have no relationship with, that is the answer you get.
Enterprise and smaller businesses
We have worked inside large institutional estates with years of customisation, and with businesses of fifteen people who need something proportionate and cannot afford to get it wrong.
Research you can read first
Our architecture work is published on the R&D wing pages, with the research it applies, rather than kept as a sales asset. Judge the thinking before you commit to the firm.
We work from Maynooth in County Kildare, which puts most of Dublin, Meath and the surrounding counties within an easy morning, and we work remotely with clients further afield across Ireland, the UK and the United States. For an initial conversation it rarely matters where anybody is; for the work that follows, being able to sit in the room for a day or two usually does.
A small, senior team that stays accountable.
- Architect-led. Every engagement is led by a senior architect who stays accountable for the decisions, from the first hour to the handover.
- Over twenty years of building and integrating software. Enterprise integration, cloud platforms, product delivery and now AI agents, across sectors where systems cannot fail.
- Independent and vendor-neutral. AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, and whatever platforms you already run. We recommend what fits, including doing less.
- Research, applied. The patterns we use are published openly on The Software Lens and applied by our R&D Wing, so you can read the reasoning before you hire us.
- We run what we recommend. We build our own product, Nexcubator, on the same architecture we design for clients.
- You own everything. Your repository, your cloud account and your documentation from the first week. Based in Ireland, working across the EU and beyond.
Questions we get asked about IT consulting
What does IT consultancy actually cover?▼
Choosing between platforms or vendors, deciding whether to build or buy, reviewing a system that is slow or fragile, judging a supplier proposal, and planning a change before money is committed. The output is a written recommendation with the reasoning, in plain language, that you can hand to whoever delivers it.
Is there a difference between IT consulting and IT consultancy?▼
None that matters. The two words describe the same work and we answer to both. What differs between firms is what you get at the end: a presentation, or a recommendation with the reasoning attached that somebody else could act on.
How do we know the advice is independent?▼
We are not a reseller and we earn no commission or referral fee from any vendor. The same engineers who give the advice are the ones who would have to build on it, so a recommendation that does not fit your operations, your team or your budget costs us too.
What happens in the free first hour?▼
You describe the problem or the decision in front of you, and a practising architect asks the questions that matter. You leave with a candid read on the options, the risk and the realistic effort, and a short written summary that is yours to keep whichever way you go.
What does an engagement cost?▼
It depends on the question, which is why we do not publish a rate we would only have to qualify. A short fixed-scope review is typically one to two weeks; the independent evaluation programme runs four to six. You will have a number and a scope in writing before anything starts.
Do you work with businesses outside Ireland?▼
Yes. We are based in Maynooth and work across Ireland, with clients in the United Kingdom and the United States, and we support projects internationally. Most consulting work runs perfectly well remotely, and we will say when being on site is worth the travel.
Talk to Us About Your Systems
An independent review, help choosing a direction, or a partner to deliver the change. Start with the free hour and find out which one you need.
Book a free 1-hour consultationWhen the estate itself is the problem.
Most of what looks like an IT problem is a process running across a dozen products that do not talk to each other. Nexcubator is one platform for the whole business, built out of the engagements where that was the real diagnosis.
See what one platform looks like