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brainiac/studio

Digital Studio

brainiac/studiobrainiac/studio
← CTO as a Service
04 · cto as a service / architecture review

A health check for the software you already own.

For teams whose product has started to feel heavy. Releases take longer, the cloud bill keeps climbing, and nobody can say exactly why. We take it apart, explain what’s really going on, and hand you a plan with prices on it. Three weeks, start to finish.

See our work
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our point of view

Nothing broke. It just got heavy — and that’s much harder to explain to a board.

Software rarely fails all at once. It gets slower to change, pricier to run, and scarier to touch. Every single decision behind that made sense on the day it was made. Stacked up over four years, they become the reason a two-day feature now takes three weeks and everyone shrugs.

A review is not a list of complaints about your engineers. It’s an outside pair of eyes separating what is genuinely holding you back from what merely looks untidy. You get a ranked plan: what to fix, in what order, what each piece costs, and — just as valuable — what to leave alone.

3 weeksFrom kick-off to the plan in your hands
30–60%Typical cloud savings we find on the way
1 pageThe summary your board will actually read
what we build

What we look at.

01

How the pieces fit together

We map your whole system onto one page: what talks to what, where traffic flows, and where everything queues up the moment a busy day arrives.

02

Speed and capacity

Where the slow parts are, and what genuinely happens at ten times today’s traffic. We measure instead of guessing, then show you the ceiling and the cost of raising it.

03

The cloud bill, line by line

Where the money goes each month, what’s oversized, and what nobody remembered to switch off. Most reviews pay for themselves right here.

04

How your data is organised

Whether your database can grow with you, how the slow queries got slow, and how safe your backups really are. We test a restore — remarkably few teams ever have.

05

Security, practically

Access, secrets, dependencies and the boring gaps that cause most real breaches. No scare tactics, and no 400-page scanner printout you’ll never read.

06

How code reaches customers

From an engineer finishing work to a customer using it: how long it takes, how many steps, how risky it feels, and how quickly you can undo a bad release.

07

The parts nobody wants to touch

Every codebase has them. We name them, explain why they’re feared, and tell you honestly which are worth rebuilding and which are perfectly fine left alone.

use cases

When teams call us.

01

Releases keep slowing down

Same team, same hours, less shipped every quarter. Usually the system is fighting them; sometimes it’s the process. We tell you which, with evidence.

02

The cloud bill outgrew the business

Costs rising faster than customers. We find where it leaks and what stopping it takes — usually within the first week.

03

A growth spike is coming

A campaign, a major client, a new market. We find what breaks first and what it costs to hold the line, while there’s still time to act.

04

New leadership, inherited system

A new CTO or a new owner needs an honest, independent picture quickly — and something credible to put in front of the board.

approach

How a review runs.

01

Kick-off

Half a day with your team to hear the symptoms and agree what a good outcome looks like. We want your engineers’ theories — they’re usually half right, and that half saves us a week.

02

Dig in

One week reading the code, the dashboards, the incident history and the invoices. Read-only access throughout. We work around your team, not through them.

03

Measure

We test what we suspect: load, database behaviour, release times, restore times. Opinions are cheap; numbers end arguments that have been running for months.

04

Prioritise

Every finding gets an impact, an effort and a cost, so you can see what buys the most relief per riyal spent. Some things we will tell you to ignore entirely.

05

Present and plan

A written report, a one-page summary for the board, and a working session with your engineers so the plan becomes theirs rather than a document that gathers dust.

pricing

Engagement models.

— 01

Focused Review

from $9k

One system, one question. Usually “why is this so slow” or “why is this bill so high”. One week, one straight answer.

  • 5 working days
  • One system or one question
  • Written findings and a call
  • Priced fix list
Most popular— 02

Full Review

from $18k

The whole product: how it’s built, what it costs, how safe it is, and how fast you can ship. Three weeks, board-ready.

  • 3 weeks, two senior engineers
  • Everything in scope
  • Board summary and full report
  • Working session with your team
— 03

Review & Rebuild Plan

from $30k

The review plus a costed, sequenced plan — and we stay on for a quarter to keep the plan honest as reality intervenes.

  • Full review included
  • Quarter-by-quarter roadmap
  • Hiring and budget guidance
  • 3 months of advisory after
faq

Frequently asked.

5 questions answered. Still have one? Reach out.

Not if it’s done properly. We start by asking your engineers what they would fix — most of what we report, they already suspected. The review gives their case numbers and an outside voice. More often than not, the leads thank us.

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