Think · Technical discovery and architecture
Years of undocumented legacy systems, hidden dependencies, hundreds of repositories, and the critical knowledge held by three long-serving people. Most modernisation programmes spend months working out what exists.
Using agentic discovery, we turn complex technology estates into a living map with actionable intelligence in weeks, and a target architecture and plan you can take to the board.
THE PROBLEM
This is not a failure of your team. It is what years of successful growth does to an estate. When your technology estate is a black box, every investment decision carries unnecessary cost, complexity and risk.
Every attempt to plan the programme stalls at discovery. The estimates swing by a factor of three, so the board defers, and the estate gets another year older.
The documentation wasn't updated because everyone was busy. Three or four long-serving team members know how it really works. They are the single point of failure for the whole business, and they know it.
Dependencies are undocumented, so a small change in one place breaks something in another. Teams compensate by slowing down, and delivery grinds.
The board wants AI in the product and the operation. The estate was not built for it, and nobody can say with confidence what would need to change first.
THE PROCESS
Discovery, in weeks not months, informs immediate value creation and becomes the basis for continuous, living platform intelligence.
Map
Our locally deployed AI accelerator Atlas integrates with your source repositories, database schemas, infrastructure configuration and runtime telemetry across the estate. It extracts dependency maps, API boundaries, resource usage and team ownership. Alongside, we run a Well-Architected Review against the hyperscaler frameworks and interview the people who hold the knowledge, so the map carries what the code cannot tell us.
You hold: A living, queryable map of the estate, with risk, waste and single points of failure made visible.
Design
Our locally deployed data accelerator Compass connects the estate data to business constraints: which systems carry revenue, which carry regulatory exposure, where the cost sits. We apply domain-driven design to carve the monolith into bounded contexts and shape a North Star architecture, then sequence the modernisation using Strangler Fig patterns so nothing has to be replaced in one go.
You hold: A target architecture, a bounded-context map and a sequenced modernisation roadmap.
Build
We prove the riskiest assumption in the plan with a working spike: a first bounded context extracted, a first service routed through an API gateway, or a first workload migrated. Enough to turn the estimate into evidence before the programme is funded.
You hold: A proven first slice and an estimate the board can trust.
Run
The map, the architecture and the roadmap are handed over as assets you own, with your architects trained to keep Atlas and Compass current. The estate map stops being a point-in-time document and becomes the thing you plan against.
You hold: A business case for modernisation, named owners, and a map that stays alive after we leave.
THE OUTCOME
You finish with evidence rather than opinion:
PARTNERS AND ECOSYSTEM
We hold the AWS Migration and Modernisation Competency and Well-Architected capability across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, and we are a Snowflake Services Select Partner and a Databricks Silver Partner on the data side.
We recommend the platform the evidence supports, and where hyperscaler funding is available for the modernisation that follows, we help you qualify for it. As part of the Version 1 Group, larger estates can draw on the group's enterprise platform depth through the same relationship.
Migration and Modernisation Competency.
Well-Architected Reviews against the hyperscaler frameworks are the baseline every map is measured against, and the competency is what lets us qualify the modernisation that follows for AWS funding.
Services Select Partner.
Where the estate's problem is the data rather than the code, the target architecture has to account for it. Compass reads the data estate alongside the application estate.
Silver Partner.
The second of the two data platforms we assess against, so the recommendation is made on the evidence in your estate rather than on a single vendor relationship.
Alongside them, we work across Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and GitHub.
BUILT IN-HOUSE, PROVEN ON CLIENT WORK
Reads the estate
An agentic discovery harness that profiles brownfield technology estates, mapping architecture, dependencies, resource usage and team ownership to expose risk, waste and modernisation opportunities.
For this work: Atlas is the reason discovery takes weeks, not months. It reads the estate directly, so the map is built from runtimes and repositories rather than from interviews and out-of-date diagrams.
Connects the decisions
A queryable knowledge graph and AI reasoning layer that connects estate data, dependencies and business constraints to inform modernisation, migration and investment prioritisations and decisions.
For this work: Compass takes what Atlas finds and connects it to cost, revenue and regulatory constraints, so modernisation decisions are made on evidence, with the trade-offs visible.
LIVE IN BUSINESSES LIKE YOURS
PayPoint
Reverse Conway and domain-driven design applied to realign team structure with the estate, and a clear modernisation roadmap.
Read the case study
OAG
Every dependency in a flagship aviation data product mapped for structured transition or retirement, then rebuilt.
Read the case study
StepChange
Cloud Adoption Framework mapping and Well-Architected Reviews across the machine estate before a data-centre exit.
Read the case study
Zuto
Atlas discovery across the estate as the foundation for the modernisation and automation that followed.
Read the case study
This is a partner who has already earned trust in the hardest environments to operate in.
James Allen
Partnerships Lead for UKI and Northern Europe, Anthropic
THE FIRST STEP
A two-to-four-week Atlas discovery gives you a living map of the estate and a first view of risk and waste, as an asset you own whether or not we go any further. Most clients find the map changes the size and shape of the programme they were about to fund.
