Top Cloud Consulting Companies in 2025

Maybe you’re a growing company finding yourself constrained by your current IT systems, or a small startup looking to save on costs associated with computing and storage. You’re ready to make the transition to a cloud-based system, but you need some support to get there. Cloud consulting companies can help make this process as smooth as possible, but it can be overwhelming to know where to start.

That’s where we come in – we’re more than happy to help you compare options from different cloud consulting firms to find exactly the right fit for your business’s needs.

What are Cloud Consulting Services?

Cloud transformation consulting services enable companies to make a seamless transition from an in-house to a cloud-based computing infrastructure. Consultants can help companies audit their needs, understand the current IT landscape, and create a strategy and roadmap for implementing the necessary changes. Typically, this process helps companies design a computing architecture tailored to their needs, create a plan, assist with data migration, provide support for optimization, and establish a foundation for system governance.

Depending on the companies’ current set-up, this process can look quite different. For example, whether they’re planning to adopt a cloud model for the first time or if they’re optimizing and modernizing their current implementation. It can, of course, differ as well depending on the company's plans for implementation, whether they plan to adopt a hybrid approach (maintaining some of their own storage and computing infrastructure in-house while moving parts of their operation to the cloud) or a fully cloud-based model. Beyond this, implementation can also be tailored to optimize for cost and performance depending on the companies’ priorities.

Benefits of Cloud Consulting Services

What exactly is the benefit of Cloud Consulting Services for your business? Cloud consulting services take the guesswork out of implementing and managing a cloud-based computing model.

Drawing from consultants’ expertise and understanding of the IT landscape, companies can implement this transition more efficiently, achieving faster time-to-market.

Moreover, these consulting services can help unlock the potential of cloud infrastructure for businesses, including:

• Improved scalability of services
• Reduced costs
• Increased reliability
• More effective security and compliance practices.

Depending on the size of a company, of course, the benefits of adopting a cloud-based computing model will differ.

• For a start-up or scale-up company, cloud consulting services can drastically reduce costs. Rather than making an up-front investment to acquire and manage their own computing systems, they can pay a smaller cost to essentially rent these services from a trusted provider.
• For mid-sized companies, cloud-based computing systems can allow them to scale their business more efficiently; increased demand for compute or storage can be met nearly instantaneously, while the work required for system maintenance is outsourced entirely.
• For enterprise businesses, cloud solutions are typically more complex. In this case, companies tend to opt for a hybrid approach, strategically moving certain operations and data to the cloud, while keeping other legacy systems in place. A good cloud consultant can enable large businesses to leverage the cost-saving and scale-enabling benefits of this technology while balancing the complexity of legacy systems.

That being said, there are some inherent risks to consider as well when implementing the systems. While cloud providers like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure have robust security measures in place, there is always a risk of entrusting company data to another party. Likewise, it is important to carefully review Identity and Access Management protocols within these systems to ensure that only the right people have access to sensitive information. Downtime of hosting infrastructure can also be a challenge, creating a possible choke point for information.

That said, cloud-based systems can also support risk-reduction priorities of companies. Ease of increasing compute and storage means less downtime for services, while implementing these systems can allow for the adoption of zero-trust policies, increasing the robustness of system security.

Main cloud service models

Depending on their needs, companies can opt for different cloud services and deployment models. Cloud service models define the division of responsibility between companies and their service providers. Options include:

• IaaS, or Infrastructure as a Service, is a great choice for projects needing custom configuration. Typically, this includes on-demand computing, storage and networking, allowing for fine-grained control and maximum flexibility.
• SaaS, or Software as a Service, provides pre-built applications requiring little to no configuration. These are ideal for standard business use; think, for example, of email, CMS, or online collaboration platforms.
• PaaS, or Platform as a Service, is best for standardized applications. Providers manage a development and deployment platform (handling infrastructure, runtimes, and databases) so that companies can focus on developing applications.
• FaaS (Function as a Service), or Serverless, which optimizes for cost efficiency. Functions are triggered by events, only requiring companies to pay for actual execution time.

On the other hand, deployment models also differ significantly, which defines how cloud services run and where they are hosted. Models include:

• Public cloud, for example, Amazon Web Services, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform. This uses existing global infrastructure and is best for companies requiring massive scale.
• Private cloud, which creates a dedicated infrastructure for a company. This is best for strict regulatory compliance.
• Hybrid cloud, which includes a combination of on-premise and cloud systems. This is typically used by larger companies with legacy code.
• Multi-cloud, which blends different cloud vendors (AWS, Azure, GCP), which are chosen depending on vendors’ cost-efficiency and respective strengths.

How to choose a Cloud Consulting Company

Business size, sector, location and current priorities can all guide a choice among cloud migration consulting companies. Here are a few key considerations to keep in mind when evaluating different cloud consulting companies to find the perfect match.

Expertise and Certifications

• Does the consultant have certifications with the relevant providers (for example, AWS, Azure, GCP)?
• Do they have competencies matching the company’s needs (for example, Kubernetes, data/AI, and security frameworks)?

Industry alignment and experience

• Has the provider worked with companies in the relevant business sector before? (healthcare, finance, public sector)
• Do they have experience with the specific compliance frameworks relevant to a company’s sector? (ex. HIPAA, SOC 2)
• Do they have relevant case studies that demonstrate this expertise?

Architectural framework

• Do they follow best practices for architectural structure (for example, the AWS Well-Architected Framework)
• Do they use infrastructure-as-code frameworks (for example, Terraform, CloudFormation)?
• Do they use CI/CD pipelines for deployment?
• Can they provide reference architectures as part of case studies?

Security and compliance

• Do they clearly explain the shared responsibility model?
• Do they have a clear approach to Identity and Access Management?
• What is their approach to audit readiness? Do they maintain audit trails and compliance documentation?
• Do they implement encryption at rest and in transit?

FinOps maturity

• Do they clearly establish cost baselines and forecasts?
• Do they have cost guardrails and alerts?
• How do they manage commitments? Do they have, for example, reserved instances or savings plans?
• Do they define and track KPIs for spending?

Delivery model and scale

• Does the company offer service in the business’s time zone?
• Do they have sufficient team size to support the project?
• What is their service schedule? Do they offer 24/7 support?
• Do they offer clear SLAs and paths for escalation?

Tooling and automation

• Do they implement observability practices?
• Do they use policy-as-code for governance?
• Do they have defined procedures for back-up and disaster recovery?

References and outcomes

• Do they have examples of measurable results from past projects?
• Do they have realistic ROI timelines?
• Can they show KPI examples of past clients?
• Do they provide references of past clients for contact?

Cost of Cloud Consulting Services

There are a range of factors that influence the cost of cloud migration consulting services. Taking stock ahead of time will help companies budget effectively and avoid surprises down the line. Here, we walk through the factors that impact the pricing of cloud migration consulting services.

Pricing models range from hourly / Time and Materials (T&M), to fixed-price milestones and monthly managed service retainers.

• With hourly and Time and Materials (T&M) structures, companies pay for hours worked, billed on a weekly or monthly basis. This tends to be best for projects where the scope can evolve over time, including discovery work or ongoing optimizations. This allows for flexibility, but costs can be less predictable.
• With the fixed-price milestone model, companies and the provider agree on a price for a clear deliverable ahead of time. This tends to be best for projects with clear requirements and timelines. Costs are more predictable, but projects must be clearly definable from the beginning.
• Monthly managed services retainers are fixed fees, paid monthly, for ongoing support. For example, companies might arrange this for monitoring, incident response, or optimization work. These typically include service level agreements and are ideal for ongoing support work.

Drawing from cloud consultants featured on our own platform, rates range from approximately $20 to $200 hourly, with an average of around $30 to $49 hourly. That said, prices will vary depending on experience level, location, and specialization of consultants.

Beyond this, key drivers of cost for a project range from scope to compliance, data gravity, tool licensing, and cutover planning.

Scope

Lower-complexity projects, such as a straightforward data migration, tend to run more quickly and cost less.
• On the other hand, modernization projects tend to be more complicated as they require refactoring existing capabilities. These tend to be significantly more expensive.

Compliance

• Industries that are highly regulated, such as finance, healthcare, and government, require specialized expertise and consideration, which adds to project costs.
• Regulations to consider include HIPAA, SOC 2, FedRAMP and GDPR.
• Likewise, audit preparation and documentation can increase project spending.

Data gravity

• The amount of data involved in a project also adds to the project timeline and costs.
• Particularly large datasets need data bandwidth consideration, specialised transfer tools, and extended cutover windows.

Tool licensing

• Specialised migration tooling is often needed, and is typically separate from consulting fees. This can include monitoring platforms, security tools, backup and recovery software, and compliance check tools.

Cutover planning

• It’s also important to consider the costs associated with transitioning from a company's existing system to a new cloud platform without disrupting business operations.
• The process must be accounted for, which includes creating run books, rollback plans, and testing.
• Phased migrations are an option, but they also increase project length and cost.

Likewise, it is wise to consider the hidden costs that often impact the bottom line of a project.

Cloud egress fees

• It typically costs money to transfer data out of cloud providers. The costs are approximately $0.05 to $0.12 per GB.
• Multi-cloud or hybrid models require ongoing data transfer costs.

Refactoring

• Simple migration projects can uncover underlying technical debt, leading to unanticipated work.

Parallel run

• The process of migration can require running both an on-premises and cloud system in parallel for some time. This means paying for both architectures as they are used at the same time, and creates additional work to reconcile data and check for inconsistencies during this period.

Training

• Updating infrastructure also means making sure that teams are trained on using new tools and processes. This transition process can lead to unforeseen expenses.

Ongoing optimization

• After the first launch, cloud deployments are rarely cost-optimised. Companies should anticipate cost optimization in the form of architecture refinement and reserved instance management after the first system launch.

Finally, cloud consulting projects will look different according to the company's needs and priorities. Common scenarios for cloud migration range from short-term (workload assessment and roadmaps) to longer-term (lift-and-shift migration and refactoring / modernization projects). They can also take the form of ongoing monitoring and support, as is the case with managed cloud services.

A workload assessment and roadmap is typically a shorter-term discovery project, aimed at understanding a company’s systems, assessing possible challenges, and creating a roadmap for migration with a longer-term cost estimate.

Lift and Shift migrations tend to be relatively straightforward projects in which existing servers and applications are moved to the cloud with few changes. Costs associated will depend on the scale of a business and the complexity of the migration.

Refactor / modernization projects tend to be longer-term, and are aimed at transforming company applications so that they are suitable for cloud-native services. These tend to require more up-front investment, but can be cost-effective in the longer term.

On the other hand, managed cloud services are ongoing agreements, usually consisting of around-the-clock monitoring, incident response and optimization work. Costs associated will depend on the size of the cloud infrastructure and the scope of tasks specified in the Service Level Agreements.