Every IT decision maker understands the importance of a clear cloud strategy. It is not just about where you host your apps. Your strategy must actively support the overall mission of your company. The challenge is that Azure evolves at lightning speed. New features, services, and security standards appear constantly, making it hard for teams to keep up. 

This is where many organisations fall into the trap of reactive cloud management. They spend all their time fixing problems and responding to immediate demands. Whereas proactive management requires something different. It needs dedicated expertise that can look years ahead and guide your architecture toward future success. 

Reactive vs Proactive Cloud Management 

Reactive management focuses on solving today’s issues. Proactive management anticipates tomorrow’s challenges and positions your business to take advantage of new opportunities. Without expert guidance, your cloud strategy risks falling behind. This is what we call ‘strategy drift’. 

The Risks of Strategy Drift 

When your cloud configuration moves away from best practices, you face three major risks: 

• Unnecessary Costs: You miss new cost saving features or fail to adapt to licensing changes. 

• Missed Innovation: You do not adopt AI or data services that could give your business a competitive edge. 

• Security Gaps: Your architecture fails to keep up with the latest security standards, leaving vulnerabilities unaddressed. 

A dedicated expert resource such as a specialist Azure Solution Architect can help to prevent these risks. However, hiring a full time Azure Solution Architect is expensive and for most businesses their expertise is only needed for major projects or complex upgrades. So how do you access that high level insight when you need it most? 

Five Expert Tips for IT Decision Makers 

To future proof your Azure strategy, here are five essential tips: 

1. Prioritise Proactive FinOps: Do not wait for the bill to arrive before thinking about costs. Implement automated rules and architectural best practices to ensure continuous cost optimisation. 

2. Plan for AI Adoption: Azure is rapidly integrating AI features. Your cloud strategy should include a roadmap for leveraging services like Copilot and advanced Data and AI platforms, such as Microsoft Fabric, to drive business growth. 

3. Strengthen Security Posture: Regularly review your architecture against the latest security standards. Proactive security checks prevent vulnerabilities before they become incidents. 

4. Align with Sustainability Goals: Track CO₂ emissions in your Azure usage and integrate sustainability targets into your cloud roadmap. 

5. Leverage Azure Expert Advisory: The best way to ensure your strategy is sound is by partnering with a Microsoft Azure Expert MSP. Selecting the right partner will bring certified expertise and proven experience to help you deliver business value. 

CSP+ Delivers Azure Expert Advisory 

Our Cloud Direct CSP+ programme is designed to help you close the expertise gap. CSP+ is a tiered model so that you can pick the level of support that your business needs. From the essentials tier where you’ll gain an initial onboarding health check and business hours support. To the enterprise tier for 24×7 support, monthly optimisation reports and access to a dedicated Azure Solution Architect to deliver strategic advisory sessions.  

These experts provide ongoing architectural reviews to keep your Azure strategy aligned with your business goals. This includes: 

• Strategic Feature Adoption: Guidance on deploying new Azure features safely and effectively. 

• Long Term Architecture: Support in designing scalable, resilient, and secure environments. 

• Risk Mitigation: Reviewing your environment to eliminate potential security and performance issues before they become incidents. 

Expert insight through CSP+ means your internal team is never alone. You have the full weight of a certified Azure Expert MSP behind you, ensuring your cloud platform is architecturally optimised and ready for innovation. 

Ready to Strengthen Your Azure Strategy 

Stop reacting and start planning for the future. Try our CSP+ calculator to find the right plan for your business. Plus, save on costs instantly.

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that artificial intelligence will be integral to how organisations operate effectively and remain competitive. But responsibility is a topic that regularly rears its head, and the question of how you use AI responsibly isn’t one purely for IT but for your organisation’s executive leadership. Here we consider how to benefit from AI, while remaining true to your organisation’s values, obligations and stakeholders.  

Much is written and spoken of AI’s power to drive business transformation, efficiency and innovation. But as the saying goes, ‘with great power comes great responsibility’.

Using AI responsibly isn’t just about regulatory compliance. It’s about trust, safeguarding reputation, and ensuring that AI strengthens rather than undermines the organisation’s values and purpose. There are three important topics to consider – People, Planet, and Policy.

People

Let’s start by confronting the really big question: jobs. We’ve all seen and heard carefully worded references to AI’s labour-saving capabilities. It does less work, it means fewer workers, but does that also mean redundancies? This question needs considering, carefully, at a very senior level, and very early on.

They’ll need to know the expected time savings and whether these affect fractions of roles or entire roles. You should also consider timeframes in each area, and how these compare to natural attrition, retirement and contract expiration timescales. They’ll also need to know recruitment pipelines, so hiring can be slowed or redirected rather than abruptly frozen, as well as redeployment opportunities and the skills required for new or expanded roles such as AI oversight, data literacy, and creative problem-solving.

This will impact much of what follows.      

Enablement, not displacement

Responsible AI should augment human judgement and not replace it – freeing people from repetitive work. But to achieve this, it needs to be accompanied byreskilling and digital literacy programmes that enable employees to work effectively with AI systems. Success should be measured in terms of human productivity and satisfaction, and not headcount reduction.

Transparent and ethical

Everyone involved with AI, from developers to decision-makers, must understand what AI can and cannot do. Build a culture of AI literacy and ethical awareness supported by specific training on responsible data use, bias awareness, and explainability. Employees using AI outputs should be able to interpret and justify its decisions, especially in regulated sectors. Staff must appreciate that humans remain accountable for AI-assisted outcomes and feel confident challenging algorithmic decisions without recrimination.

Inclusion and fairness

Similarly, fairness and inclusion must be embedded in your use of AI. These systems will typically maintain or increase any biases in training data, so utilise diverse teams in AI design and validation. Train models with diverse data sets and monitor for bias, especially in HR, credit, or customer-facing use cases.Treat governance of AI fairness with the importance of a workplace equality and diversity issue, rather than a technical issue.

Planet

AI’s benefits should also be considered in the context of its environmental impact and sustainability. During training AI models can consume significant energy, and operationally AI infrastructure has a significant carbon footprint. But with the right actions, this can be mitigated.

Opt for energy-efficient architectures

Data centres powered by renewable energy, with liquid cooling, and using energy-optimised GPUs (Graphic Processing Units) and ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits) are more energy efficient. Also consider scheduling AI workloads to optimise power use.

Actively manage your technology lifecycle

Using cloud and hybrid models can allow you to dynamically scale, without having an over-provisioned on-premises infrastructure. Apply sustainability principles to AI hardware: responsibly sourcing, refurbishing and/or reusing, and recycling at end-of-life.

Use AI for sustainability

‘Planet’ doesn’t just mean mitigating AI’s environment impact. AI can also make a positive contribution towards meeting corporate sustainability goals through data-driven energy optimisation, intelligent logistics routing that lowers emissions, predictive maintenance to reduce waste, and carbon accounting.

Policy

A responsible use of AI also depends on robust governance that ensures transparency, accountability, and compliance. A key consideration for the board is who will be accountable for AI ethics and compliance, and how governance can be shown to be effective?

A best practice approach combines collective ownership with clear executive accountability. It is likely to blend existing structures with some new, specialised capabilities. This might take the form of a Chief Information Officer or Chief Digital/Technology Officer with primary accountability, working with a cross-functional AI Governance Board. This would include Technology, Data, HR/People, Legal, Compliance, Risk, Operations, your ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) team, and business unit leaders.

This will provide the basis for effectively actioning the following. 

Establish an AI governance framework

Determine the principles which will guide your use of AI. These need to be consistent with your organisation’s values and risk appetite and will typically encompass fairness, transparency, accountability, privacy, and sustainability. Bear in mind that different contexts may require different ethical considerations – what’s appropriate in one area may not be in another. AI ethics will touch IT, legal, HR and compliance so ensure that there is clear ownership within and across these areas.

Control and oversight

Integrate AI risk management into existing risk frameworks, with a focus on model validation, auditability, explainability, and version control. Track who built which model, with what data, and how it is performing. Require human-in-the-loop oversight for all critical decision and systems.

Regulatory alignment

There will be external interest in your AI use from regulators, customers, investors and other stakeholders, so aim to stay ahead of expectation. There is an EU AI Act, with most provisions applying from August 2026, and a UK AI Assurance Framework. The Information Commissioner’s Office has provided AI guidance, with sector-specific guidance expected in several areas (like from the FCA in financial services). Maintain audit trails for AI models, data lineage, and decision logic to satisfy auditors and regulators.

But, above all, be transparent about how AI is used, governed, and improved.

A final thought

Using AI responsibly requires deliberate, pre-emptive leadership. It means ensuring that AI use aligns with organisational purpose, is trusted by employees and other stakeholders, and contributes to sustainable growth. Many will do this badly, but those that do it well can successfully position their organisations as trustworthy and responsible innovators.

Cloud Direct can help you successfully benefit from AI in a real and responsible way. Request a call with a subject matter experts through the form below.

Cloud tracking and optimisation often slip to the bottom of the IT to do list, especially in the midst of daily firefighting and urgent fixes. But when you are managing a complex Azure environment, operating without visibility is like driving at night without headlights.

You must consider whether it’s worth exposing your business to unnecessary risk. Without clear data, decisions about your digital strategy become guesswork. That guesswork often leads to wasted spend, compliance concerns, and missed opportunities. 

Cloud visibility matters for cost and compliance (and your sanity) 

Visibility impacts vital outcomes for organisations, including: 

• Financial Control:  Continuous cost management keeps you financially competitive and allows you to make thoughtful decisions. It is crucial to identify underutilised resources and right-size virtual machines to stop unnecessary spending. While this is true, tracking every penny spent is difficult, especially with numerous systems and reports to analyse. Although, the dream of real time visibility to proactively monitor spend across all licenses and resources might be closer than you think. 

• Governance and Compliance: A strong security posture is essential in today’s cyber landscape with AI advancing at an unprecedented rate. Ensuring your environment is fully secure on all fronts is crucial, but not straightforward. Gaining visibility can be pivotal here for maintaining robust governance and compliance across your Azure estate. Visibility enables you to continuously monitor for policy violations, misconfigurations, and unauthorised changes, reducing the risk of data breaches and regulatory penalties. 

• Drive Efficiency: Sifting through multiple reports and dashboards to find the information you need is draining your time and resources. But it’s not just you – many businesses are rife with fragmented data, making manual investigation a necessary chore. The cure is a centralised platform where you can gain actionable insights instantly and free up your team to focus on more strategic initiatives. When you can quickly pinpoint underperforming services or areas for improvement, overall business productivity is boosted. It’s about empowering your team with the right information at the right moment so you can deliver greater results. 

Gain control of Azure and end the admin nightmare 

Now wondering where you can find this one-stop-shop for your Azure environment? That is exactly what the Provide™ Portal delivers. It is a centralised platform that provides all the Azure visibility you need in one place. But it also goes far beyond basic Azure reporting to provide you with actionable recommendations and optimisations, including: 

• Cost and License Management:  Set budgets and receive alerts before you hit unplanned expenditure, track spend across all M365 subscriptions and Azure resources instantly, and better plan for the future with forecasted spend outlook. This proactive approach is aligned to Microsoft’s Well Architected Framework (WAF) and helps you avoid surprises and keep your cloud costs predictable. 

• Monitor Security Posture:  Track cloud compliance levels, identify misconfigurations, and review risk exposure across your environment – as well as access to your Microsoft Secure Score to understand your current secure posture and how to improve it. With real time alerts, you can address vulnerabilities before they become serious threats. 

• Performance Metrics: Observe the health and efficiency of your running services to maintain optimal speeds and availability. This ensures your applications deliver the experience your users expect. 

• Sustainability Goals: Visibility even extends to tracking CO₂ emissions within your Azure usage. If your organisation has committed to strong sustainability goals, this sometimes overlooked metric helps align your cloud strategy with environmental targets. 

Real time data means no more manual reports. Instead of tracking down and dissecting last month’s costs, your monthly review becomes a proactive planning session focused on optimisation and growth. 

Beyond the Portal to expert optimisation reports 

Cloud Direct CSP+ enhances the Provide™ Portal with expert oversight. Regular optimisation reports will deliver personalised improvement suggestions on cost, security, and performance. Higher tiers also include direct access to cloud architects to support your future strategy and ambitions. This is the difference between simply having data and having expert insight applied to act strategically with that data. 

The combination of cutting-edge technology and certified expert review ensures your cloud environment is continually optimised and you extract maximum value from your investment. Plus, you can save money on your Azure spending. 

Ready to take control of your Azure environment? 

Stop guessing and start making informed decisions with real time visibility. Try our CSP+ calculator to find the right plan for your business.

If you’re an IT manager, you know how managing support tickets can feel like a second job. You spend hours juggling internal requests and chasing updates while waiting for service providers to resolve complex issues. It is frustrating and it wastes time – but there is a better way.

The real cost of slow Azure support  

• Productivity loss: According to a recent study, employees spend an average of 6 hours per month waiting for IT issue resolution. Employees who report long IT support delays also state the negative effects on morale and job satisfaction.  

• Financial impact: Gartner estimates that IT downtime costs businesses an average of £4,400 per minute for critical systems. Even smaller outages can accumulate tens of thousands in lost revenue. 

• Reputation damage: Slow IT queues can harm customer experience and lead to public complaints. Studies have shown that organisations with support ticket backlogs report lower customer satisfaction scores.  
• Security exposure: Delays in patching or fixing access issues leave doors open for attackers. A single missed update can lead to compliance breaches or data loss. 

Think about what happens when delays drag on: 

• Employee productivity stalls: When staff can’t access critical resources, deadlines slip and payroll pounds go to waste. 

• Customer confidence erodes: If the issue impacts customer-facing services, trust evaporates fast. 

• Innovation freezes: Instead of driving projects forward, your IT team is stuck firefighting. 

You have a capable IT team, but when a complex Azure problem pops up, they need expert help fast.

CSP+ advances your cloud support

Many businesses assume premium Azure support is too expensive or that switching providers is a hassle. That is why we created Cloud Direct CSP+ – to make expert Azure support simple and accessible. 

We integrate support directly into your Azure consumption model, and allow you to choose the tier that fits your needs. 

• Essentials: Monday to Friday standard business hour support for response and resolution of platform issues. In addition, access to an Azure Expert MSP partner for escalations. 

• Enhanced: 24×7 enhanced support with reduced SLA’s and expert human support. Direct escalations to Microsoft through our specialist team. 

• Enterprise: 24×7 enhanced support and direct escalations to Microsoft. Plus, direct access to Tier 4 Cloud Engineers who know your environment and can fix issues fast. 

This means no more ticket queues. No generic helpdesk. Just immediate access to the right expert when you need them.  

Why Enterprise tier changes everything 

Have you ever had a critical app go down on Friday afternoon? How long did it take to get help? Imagine this… instead of waiting days for a ticket to be picked up, you are on a call with a Tier 4 Azure engineer who knows your architecture and can resolve the issue in hours, not days. That is the difference CSP+ makes. It gives your IT team the freedom to stop firefighting and start innovating.  

Unlock your team’s potential 

CSP+ means embedding an expert support team into your business. That means fewer delays and more time for strategic work that drives growth. 

Here’s what your IT team could focus on if they weren’t stuck in support queues: 

• Cloud optimisation: Fine-tuning workloads for cost efficiency and performance. 

• Security hardening: Implementing advanced threat protection and compliance frameworks. 

• Automation projects: Building workflows to eliminate manual processes. 

• Innovation initiatives: Deploying new apps, migrating legacy systems, and enabling AI-driven solutions. 

Instead of firefighting, your team can finally deliver the projects that transform your business. 

Ready to eliminate downtime?

Key takeaways from the Microsoft Digital Defence Report, written by Leon Godwin

We drew inspiration from the Churchill War Rooms to host our latest Security Briefing – a venue where strategic defence decisions once shaped our history, and now where security professionals learned from Cloud Direct and Microsoft about the new cyber landscape being shaped by AI-driven threats. 

To paraphrase Winston Churchill: “Never before in the field of digital defence has the security of so many relied so heavily on the vigilance of so few.” The battleground consists of intelligence, speed, and resilience, and adversaries are using AI-powered attacks to rapidly infiltrate and compromise organisations, faster than human-based defences can respond. 

From a day in the life of a modern CISO through attack simulations, to insights from Microsoft’s Aileen Finlay and concrete steps that you can take to adjust to the new threats, I’ll reflect on the event and share my take on the newly released Microsoft Digital Defence Report 2025. 

The reality on the ground

On 13 October, the UK government took the unprecedented step of sending a letter out to all UK businesses to highlight the significance of new cyber threats. The letter’s goal was to fundamentally reclassify cyber security from a technical operational task to a critical board-level imperative. By issuing a direct mandate, the government signaled that the intense and sophisticated nature of modern threats now constitutes a primary risk to national economic stability.  

The Microsoft Digital Defence Report 

The recent release of the Microsoft Digital Defence Report makes it clear why the UK government is so concerned, and why you should be too. 

The threat landscape isn’t just evolving – it’s accelerating. Attacks are more aggressive, more organised, and frankly, more relentless than ever. The UK is now ranked number two in the global index of countries most impacted by cyber threats. 

Defence Report takeaways for the Modern CISO 

One theme that kept coming up during the event was the “prevention versus response” paradigm, or what the military calls “Left of Bang” and “Right of Bang.” The Microsoft Digital Defence Report 2025 makes it clear; you can’t choose one over the other. You need both. 

Here’s a breakdown of the key findings of the report, and actions to take off the back of it.  

1. Identity is the Battleground 

Problem: Attackers aren’t only breaking in, they’re logging in. Identity compromise is still the number one entry point for ransomware and data theft, and it’s getting smarter. When you login to a computer you gate a token that is your permission to use that session for a period of time before you need to reauthenticate. Token theft and Adversary-in-the-Middle (AiTM) attacks are on the rise, bypassing traditional protections. Your traditional Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) that secured you for many years is now simply not enough. 

Solution: Phishing-resistant MFA is the gold standard. 

Action: 

• Audit your Entra ID environment today. 

• Enforce phishing-resistant MFA for everyone, especially admins. 

• Update legacy authentication protocols.

Impact: Phishing-resistant MFA blocks over 99% of unauthorised access attempts, according to the Microsoft report. If you do one thing this quarter, make it updating your systems from traditional MFA to phishing-resistant MFA. 

2. The Double-Edged Sword of AI 

Problem: AI isn’t just our friend, it’s the attacker’s too. They’re using it to craft convincing phishing lures, scale attacks, and even create deepfakes for fraud. 

Solution: We fight fire with fire. AI-driven defence can now contain breaches in seconds, suspending compromised accounts before a human is aware of an issue. This is helped further now that Microsoft Copilot has been bundled into the M365 E5 licenses, rather than an expensive bolt-on. 

Action: 

• Put an AI governance framework in place. ISO 42001 is a great starting point.  

• Deploy AI-powered tools like Copilot for Security, Microsoft Sentinel, and Defender XDR to automate detection and response. 

• You already have access to the phishing simulations within your M365 subscriptions, you should increase the schedule to be at least weekly. 

Impact: Moving from reactive to proactive defence shrinks dwell time, improves awareness, and limits the blast radius of an attack. 

3. Cyber Risk is Business Risk 

Problem: Too often, security is treated as an IT issue. But as we see in the examination of real-world breaches, it doesn’t just impact systems. It’s effecting revenue, supply chains and reputation. In one case this resulted in liquidation of the business and termination of it’s 700 employees.  

Solution: Security needs a seat at the boardroom table. 

Action: 

• Build reports with metrics that matter including, MFA coverage, patch latency, incident response times.  

• Run tabletop roleplaying exercises so your executive team knows what to do when, not if, the breach happens. 

Impact: A resilient culture means the business keeps moving, even when attackers try to stop it. 

What you can do next 

The MDDR 2025 isn’t just a collection of scary stats, it’s a wake-up call. 

If you’re planning your 2026 roadmap and wondering how to prioritise (or fund) these improvements, let’s talk. We can help secure funding for assessments to pinpoint your weakest links and help provide guidance on your security journey.  

Don’t wait for the breach to happen. Build resilience now.

Sign up to one of our Security Innovation consultancy sessions. These sessions are designed to help you with your specific business challenges