SSPO Consulting — Cloud, managed IT and IT staffing in Sterling, Virginia

What we do

Three things, and we say no to the rest.

A consultancy that claims to do everything usually does none of it properly. These are the areas we take on, and further down there is an honest note about the work we do not.

01 / Cloud

Cloud & infrastructure

Cloud projects rarely fail on the technology. They fail because nobody mapped the dependencies before the cutover, or because the first full month's bill arrives and no one owns it. We plan the move before we make it: what goes, what stays, what is worth rebuilding rather than copying across, and what the whole thing costs to run once the migration is finished and the applause has stopped.

Plenty of our work is on estates that were never meant to be half-migrated and now are. That is a normal starting point, not an embarrassing one.

Current-state review and dependency mapping
Migration sequencing and cutover planning
Landing zones, tenants and account structure
AWS, Azure, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace
Hybrid estates that need to stay hybrid
Cost review and ongoing spend control
Networks, VPN and remote access
Backup and recovery that has been tested

02 / Operations

Managed IT & support

The work that never appears on a roadmap and stops everything the moment it lapses. Patching, joiners and leavers, the printer, the licence renewal nobody diarised, the laptop that will not join the domain on somebody's first morning.

We run it as a service with a named engineer who knows your environment — not a rotating queue where you re-explain your setup every time you raise a ticket. Each month you get a plain record of what was done, what broke, and what we think is coming.

Helpdesk for your staff, by email or phone
Onboarding and offboarding, same day where needed
Endpoint management and patching
Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace administration
Monitoring, alerting and backup checks
Asset inventory and device lifecycle
Vendor, ISP and licensing coordination
Documentation your team keeps when we leave

03 / People

Consultants, data & applications

Sometimes the answer is not a project. It is one experienced person, starting in two weeks, who does not need three months to become useful. We place consultants directly into client teams for a quarter or for a year, and we screen them ourselves rather than forwarding whatever a keyword search returned.

They work inside your process, on your tools, in your stand-ups. We are not running a parallel project behind your back and presenting it at the end.

Contract, contract-to-hire and direct placement
Cloud, infrastructure and platform engineers
Data engineers, analysts and report developers
Application support, integration and QA
A shortlist in days, with our own notes attached
Replacement cover if a placement is wrong
Onshore and in your working hours
Handover written before the contract ends

What we do not do

We are not a security or compliance firm. We apply sensible access, backup and patching practice as part of any infrastructure or support work we run, but we do not sell penetration tests, formal audits or certification programmes. If that is what you need, we will say so early and help you find someone who does it properly.

How to engage us

Three ways in. The scope is your call.

Some clients bring us a single piece of work. Others keep us on a monthly retainer, or place our consultants inside their own team for months at a time. We are happy to work any of those ways, and we will tell you which one we think actually fits.

Model 01

Project

A defined piece of work with a start, an end and a written scope — a migration, a network rebuild, an assessment. Agreed sequence, agreed price, and a handover document rather than a verbal debrief.

Model 02

Retainer

An agreed block of time each month covering support, maintenance and the small improvements that otherwise never get made. Predictable cost, a named engineer, and a monthly summary of where the hours went.

Model 03

Embedded consultants

Our people join your team and report into your leads for the length of the engagement. Useful when you have the plan and the backlog but not the headcount, or when hiring would take longer than the work.

Discuss which fits No charge for the first conversation.

How we work

Every engagement runs the same four stages.

Nothing here is unusual. It is written down because a surprising number of engagements go wrong at exactly these four points.

Stage 01

Assess

We map what you actually have — not what the documentation says you have — and flag what is fragile, what is costing more than it should, and what is held together by one person's memory.

Stage 02

Plan

You get a written sequence with dependencies, effort and cost against each item, plus what we think can safely wait until next year. You can take that plan elsewhere if you want to. It is yours.

Stage 03

Implement

Changes land in the planned order, scheduled around your operations rather than ours, with a rollback for anything that touches production. You hear from us before the change, not after it.

Stage 04

Support

Monitoring, maintenance and a named person who already knows your environment. If the engagement ends, the documentation and the access stay with you — no hostage-taking.

Before you write

The questions we are usually asked first.

How quickly can you start?

For advisory and assessment work, usually within a week or two. For a placement, we would expect to put names in front of you within a few days of agreeing the brief, with the start date depending on notice periods. If we cannot meet the date you need, we will tell you at the first conversation rather than three weeks in.

Are you too small for us, or are we too small for you?

We work with organizations that have real infrastructure but not a large internal IT function — typically somewhere between a dozen and a few hundred staff. Below that, a managed service provider is usually better value than a consultancy. Well above it, you may need a firm that can field twenty people at once. We will say which side you fall on.

What does an engagement cost?

It depends entirely on scope, so any number quoted before we have looked at your environment would be invented. What we can commit to is that you get a written estimate before work starts, that we flag it as soon as we think we will exceed it, and that we do not bill for discovery conversations.

Do you handle security work?

Not as a service line. We apply sensible access control, patching and backup practice in everything we build and run, because that is part of doing infrastructure work competently. But we do not sell penetration testing, compliance audits or certification support, and we would rather refer you to a specialist than pretend otherwise.

Can you take over from our current provider?

Yes, and it is a fairly common request. The first fortnight is spent documenting what exists, confirming we hold every credential and licence, and testing that backups restore. Transitions go wrong when somebody assumes the outgoing provider handed over everything. We assume they did not.

What if a placed consultant is not right?

Tell us early. We would rather replace someone in week two than have you quietly work around them for six months. Replacement terms are written into the engagement agreement before anybody starts, so it is not a negotiation held at the worst possible moment.

Are your consultants onshore?

Yes. Our consultants work in United States business hours and are available for on-site work in the Northern Virginia, Washington DC and Maryland area. Remote engagements further afield are fine; we will be clear about what that means for on-site attendance.

Who actually turns up?

The people you meet during scoping are the people who do the work. We are not large enough to run a separate sales team, which we regard as an advantage. If we need to bring in someone you have not met, we introduce them first.

Get in touch

Tell us what is breaking.

Send us the problem — or the project, or the role you cannot fill — and we will tell you honestly whether it is something we should take on. If it is not, we will usually know who should.

General enquiries: contact@sspoconsulting.com
Careers: careers@sspoconsulting.com
Phone: +1 501-291-2737
Based in: Sterling, Virginia

The systems your business runs on, looked after properly.