AWS Consulting Services for Canadian SaaS and Regulated Teams
AWS consulting is the work of architecting, migrating, securing, and cost-optimizing your workloads on Amazon Web Services. MicroPyramid is a 12-year-old AWS team that does exactly this for Canadian startups, SaaS, and SMBs: architecture, cost, and operations in one engagement.
Why Canadian Teams Choose Us for AWS
Three reasons Canadian founders and engineering leads pick MicroPyramid over a local consultancy or a generic offshore team
Privacy & Data Residency
Account structure, encryption, and storage decisions are made with privacy and compliance in mind from the start, with AWS ca-central-1 (Canada) available so Canadian customer data stays in Canada.
AWS Costs Managed in CAD
We frame AWS spend in Canadian dollars and invoice in CAD, collected via Stripe. Cost reporting maps to budgets your finance team recognises: no currency-conversion guesswork on your cloud bill, no international wire fees.
Direct Ownership, Not a Ticket Mill
Our engineers directly own every engagement. You will not be passed to a delivery layer of junior developers. The engineer who runs your review is the one architecting and running your AWS estate.
AWS Consulting Services for Canadian Teams
Five services covering the full AWS lifecycle, from Well-Architected reviews and migration to cost optimization, security, and infrastructure as code
Cloud Architecture & Well-Architected Reviews
We design AWS architectures against the Well-Architected Framework (reliability, security, performance, cost, and operational excellence) for Canadian SaaS and data-heavy workloads. Built around ca-central-1 (Canada) where data residency matters.
- Reference architecture and account structure
- Well-Architected review and remediation
- Multi-AZ and high-availability design
Cloud Migration & Modernization
Move existing workloads onto AWS without disrupting paying Canadian customers. We use phased, low-risk migration patterns (replatform, refactor, or lift-and-shift) with rollback plans and near-zero-downtime cutover where feasible.
- Migration assessment and roadmap
- Phased, low-downtime cutover
- Containerisation and managed-service moves
AWS Cost Optimization in CAD
Bring AWS spend under control and frame it in CAD terms your finance team understands. We right-size, schedule, and commit (Savings Plans, Reserved Instances) so your monthly bill maps to predictable Canadian-dollar budgets.
- Right-sizing and idle-resource cleanup
- Savings Plans and Reserved Instance strategy
- Cost allocation tagging and CAD reporting
Cloud Security & Compliance
A security posture your auditors can follow. IAM least-privilege, encryption, logging, and guardrails for regulated Canadian healthtech and public-sector environments.
- IAM, KMS encryption, and least-privilege
- GuardDuty, Security Hub, and audit logging
- Data residency in ca-central-1 (Canada)
DevOps, CI/CD & Infrastructure as Code
Repeatable, auditable infrastructure using Terraform and AWS-native tooling, with CI/CD pipelines that ship safely. We give Canadian teams the automation to deploy faster without sacrificing control.
- Terraform / CloudFormation IaC
- CI/CD pipelines and automated rollouts
- Environment parity and secrets management
Best Fit For
- Canadian healthtech, SaaS, and regulated teams running production workloads on AWS
- startups and SMBs that want a secure, cost-aware AWS foundation from the start
- migrations and modernizations where ca-central-1 data residency matters from day one
- teams that want one partner to own architecture and operations, not just advice
Not the Right Fit When
- one-off questions answerable by AWS documentation or a short support call
- engagements looking only for hands without architecture or delivery ownership
- workloads committed to another cloud with no intention of using AWS
- cost reviews where there is no willingness to act on the recommendations
Planning a full move to AWS? See cloud migration services. Need product engineering on top of the cloud? See Product Engineering for Canadian Teams.
How to Get Started as a Canadian Team
We recommend starting with a Well-Architected Review: understand the estate and the priorities before committing to a larger programme. All engagements billed in CAD via Stripe.
Well-Architected Review
A structured assessment of your AWS estate against the five pillars, with a prioritized remediation plan. Priced in CAD, delivered with async updates.
- Five-pillar review
- Security and cost findings
- Prioritized remediation roadmap
- ca-central-1 residency guidance
Migration Sprint
Move a defined workload onto AWS with infrastructure as code and a low-downtime cutover plan, a production-ready landing, not a proof of concept.
- Migration assessment
- IaC and pipeline setup
- Low-downtime cutover
Managed AWS Retainer
Ongoing AWS operations, cost optimization, and security upkeep, owned by the same engineers.
- Monitoring and patching
- Monthly cost and posture review
- Retainer or time-and-material
Platforms We Build and Run on AWS
Production platforms we built and operate on AWS. Each links to the full case study.
RunCode
Our cloud-based coding platform with multiple language support, collaboration workflows, and AI-assisted coding, running on Django, Docker, and Kubernetes on AWS.
Read the case studyOnlineCompiler.io
Sandboxed code execution for 12 languages with a REST API, WebSocket support, an embeddable widget, and containerized execution on Docker and Kubernetes on AWS.
Read the case studyRefactored.ai
Multi-tenant upskilling, assessment, and interview practice platform with AI-driven audio and video feedback, running on Kubernetes on AWS.
Read the case studyFrequently Asked Questions
Straight answers to what Canadian founders and CTOs ask us before starting an AWS engagement.
What is AWS consulting, and what does an AWS consultant actually do?
AWS consulting is the work of architecting, migrating, securing, and cost-optimizing your applications on Amazon Web Services. In practice that means assessing your current estate against the Well-Architected Framework, designing a secure and scalable architecture, migrating workloads with minimal downtime, automating deployment with infrastructure as code and CI/CD, hardening security and compliance, and then continuously right-sizing so you only pay for what you use. We do this hands-on inside your own AWS account, not as a slide deck.
Where will our data live, and how do you protect it?
Your workloads run in your own AWS account, and we deploy to ca-central-1 (Canada Central, Montréal), with ca-west-1 (Canada West, Calgary) available for redundancy, so Canadian customer data can stay onshore. We keep data in ca-central-1, encrypt with keys you control, and minimize what crosses the border. We document those decisions for your auditors and work bilingually in English and French where a Quebec engagement requires it.
Can you meet healthtech and regulated-sector security requirements?
Yes. AWS provides the compliant infrastructure foundation, but in the shared-responsibility model how you configure it is what matters. We implement least-privilege IAM, KMS encryption, private networking, GuardDuty and Security Hub, and full audit logging, then align the architecture to your sector: health-privacy controls for healthtech, residency and audit controls for public-sector work, and stricter access reviews for large or regulated enterprise buyers. We design for the auditor from the start rather than retrofitting later.
How do you stop our AWS bill from spiralling, and report it in CAD?
Runaway spend is the single biggest fear teams have, and it is justified: most overspend before they get serious about it. We apply FinOps discipline: right-sizing over-provisioned instances, moving steady workloads onto Savings Plans and Reserved Instances, killing idle resources, setting budgets and billing alerts, and using storage tiers for cold data. We frame and report it all in CAD so your finance team sees numbers that map to their budgets. We start with a cost review rather than a promised percentage, because savings depend on how your estate was built.
What drives the cost of an AWS consulting engagement?
The main drivers are the size and complexity of your estate, how many workloads and integrations are in scope, your compliance and data-residency requirements, and whether we are migrating an existing system or building greenfield. Rather than an open hourly rate, we scope a fixed estimate after a Well-Architected Review so you know the shape of the work before committing. Engagements are billed in Canadian dollars (CAD) via Stripe.
How do you migrate onto AWS without downtime for our Canadian customers?
We use proven, low-risk patterns rather than a big-bang cutover: blue-green deployments, rolling updates, and database replication. The process is: assess and inventory the current environment, plan the migration in phases, replicate to a staging environment in ca-central-1 (Canada Central, Montréal), test thoroughly, switch traffic gradually behind health checks, and monitor continuously with the ability to roll back. Your paying Canadian customers keep being served throughout.
Should we build an in-house cloud team, hire a local consultancy, or use an experienced offshore partner?
Build in-house if cloud is core to your product, you have steady large-scale work, and you can fund and wait out senior hiring in Toronto, Vancouver, or Montréal. A local consultancy fits when you need people on-site for enterprise or public-sector delivery and have the budget for an account-managed engagement. An offshore partner like us fits when you want one team owning architecture, migration, cost, and operations without the in-house hiring cost or enterprise overhead, with CAD billing. We will tell you honestly when in-house is the better call.
Who owns our AWS account and infrastructure?
You do. Everything runs in your own AWS account under your billing, and you own all infrastructure as code, configuration, and documentation. We build in your repositories and hand over full access, so your team or another partner could take over cleanly. There is no lock-in and no proprietary layer.
Can you take over and optimize an AWS estate another team set up?
Yes, a large share of our work is inheriting estates built by a previous contractor or an in-house team that has moved on. We start with a Well-Architected Review to map what exists, find the security, cost, and reliability gaps, and give you a prioritized remediation plan before changing anything. From there we can stabilize, optimize, and operate the estate, or fix it and hand it back to your team with clean documentation.
Make Your AWS Estate Work for Your Canadian Business
Tell us what you are running, what it costs, and what worries you. We will tell you what we would look at first and whether we are the right team for it.