What size companies does Acton Pacific work with?

Mostly enterprise, public sector, utility, hospitality, gaming, data center, and infrastructure teams that need senior independent guidance for a network or infrastructure decision. Engagements scale from a single architecture review to multi-phase advisory; the principal works directly with the decision-maker either way.

Does Acton Pacific Strategies sell or resell hardware?

No. Acton Pacific is an independent advisory firm. Recommendations are vendor-neutral and grounded in your environment, your risk profile, and your business goals — not a quota.

What does a typical engagement include?

Most start with an initial consultation, then move into an infrastructure assessment, architecture review, vendor evaluation, or implementation roadmap depending on what you're weighing. Proposals and pricing are scoped to fit.

§ — Practice / Scope

Advisory services for high-stakes infrastructure decisions

A focused set of engagements, scoping from a single architecture review to multi-phase advisory through implementation.

§ 01 — PRACTICE / SCOPE

Where leaders bring us in

Most infrastructure failures are decided long before any cable gets run. The real leverage is upstream: the architecture choice, the vendor commitment, the operating model. We help you pressure-test the decision before the capex is spent.

No reseller incentive. No platform agenda. No template answers.

Strategic Architecture

Architecture choices, vendor-neutral, AI-readiness. The decisions that commit capital for the next 3–5 years.

01 / 03 · AI INFRA

AI Infrastructure Readiness

The honest gap between "AI-ready" claims and what the network actually delivers. We assess fabric bandwidth, lossless transport, GPU east-west patterns, and storage I/O against your real workload — not vendor reference architectures. Output: a readiness scorecard with named risks, sequencing, and budget.

When to engageYou're sizing a GPU cluster or AI training fabric, or rolling out inference at scale, and you need to know whether the existing network can carry the load before the first PO is signed.

Deliverable readiness review, risk memo, and an executive roadmap.

02 / 03 · ARCHITECTURE

Network Architecture Review

Resilient by design — so maintenance and upgrades don’t take you down. Leaf-spine, dual-fabric, ISSU/hitless-upgrade patterns, BFD/fast-convergence, and failure-domain isolation. We review the design against the SLAs your business actually needs — not the ones the vendor brochure promises.

When to engageA design is on the table from a vendor or internal team, capex commitment is imminent, and you need an independent read on whether it'll actually deliver under load.

Deliverable design review, gap analysis, and a remediation plan you can hand to engineering.

03 / 03 · STRATEGY

Technology Strategy Advisory

Multi-year roadmap aligned to business strategy, not vendor refresh cycles. We sequence cloud, on-prem, and edge decisions against capex windows, talent capacity, and lock-in risk — including a 36-month vendor concentration heat-map.

When to engageYou're standing up or refreshing a technology strategy that crosses team boundaries, vendor portfolios, or capital cycles.

Deliverable a written strategy, a phased roadmap, and an executive briefing the board can actually act on.

Vendor Evaluation & Selection

The procurement-time work where money gets committed. We write RFPs vendors can answer honestly, and we sit on your side of the negotiating table.

01 / 03 · PROCUREMENT

Vendor & RFP Evaluation

Vendor selection without lock-in. Structured scoring against your requirements — not their feature list. We model TCO over 5 years, weigh ops fit and exit cost, and stress-test reference checks. You leave knowing not just which vendor to pick, but exactly how to leave if you change your mind.

When to engageYou're building an RFP, evaluating responses, or negotiating a multi-year OEM agreement, and you want a vendor-neutral structure that won't pre-pick the answer.

Deliverable RFP structure, scoring matrix, and a vendor-neutral evaluation report.

02 / 03 · PROCUREMENT

RFP Development

RFPs that get real answers, not marketing replies. We write requirements that map to your operational reality — bandwidth, automation maturity, observability, support SLAs that match the business. Includes vendor-neutral test scenarios you can run during the bake-off.

When to engageYou're about to issue an RFP for a network refresh, AI cluster build, or vendor consolidation, and you want responses you can actually compare side-by-side.

Deliverable RFP package, evaluation rubric, reference architecture diagrams — ready to issue.

03 / 03 · COMMERCIAL

Vendor Negotiation Support

Counsel inside the room when the renewal or net-new contract is on the table. We know what each major vendor’s floor pricing looks like, where the give-backs hide, and which non-price terms (TAC tier, EOL guarantees, migration credits) matter more than the discount.

When to engageYou're 30–90 days from a major contract renewal, or a quote came in that doesn't match what your peers reported paying.

Deliverable negotiation playbook, benchmark pricing, and standby support through closing.

Security & Compliance

Audit-ready, framework-mapped, executive-translated. Compliance work that closes findings and survives the board meeting.

01 / 03 · GOVERNANCE

Executive Risk Briefing

A 90-minute briefing that translates network and security risk into business terms your CEO and board will act on. Covers segmentation gaps, vendor concentration, third-party risk, and the regulatory windows closing on you.

When to engageA multi-million-dollar infrastructure plan is going to a board, exec staff, or an audit committee, and you want a clear-eyed read on what's being approved.

Deliverable a concise risk briefing, a Q&A package for the board, and a post-decision watch list.

02 / 03 · COMPLIANCE

Compliance Assessment

PCI-DSS, HIPAA, FERPA, gaming-regulator (NGCB / GLI-19), SOX network-control mapping. We tell you where the network actually sits against the framework — not where the auditor’s checklist says it sits.

When to engageYou're entering a new compliance regime (acquisition, geographic expansion, customer mandate) or your last audit produced findings you need to close.

Deliverable gap analysis mapped to the relevant framework, remediation roadmap with effort estimates, audit-ready evidence inventory.

03 / 03 · AUDIT

Audit Preparation

Pre-audit rehearsal with the artifacts the auditor will ask for: segmentation diagrams, change records, evidence of control operation, and the answers to the three questions every auditor opens with.

When to engageYou have an audit in 30–90 days and your team isn't fully sure which infrastructure artifacts they'll need to produce.

Deliverable evidence inventory mapped to the audit request list, dry-run interview prep for technical leads, remediation guidance for findable gaps.

Lifecycle Support

The work between contracts. Modernization roadmaps, refresh planning, and renewal reviews — the cycle where most leverage gets gained or surrendered.

01 / 03 · OPERATIONS

NetOps Modernization

Day 0, 1, and 2 automation for large enterprise networks. From greenfield bring-up (ZTP, intent-based provisioning) through change management (CI/CD for network state, pre-/post-validation) to operate (closed-loop remediation, streaming telemetry, ML-driven anomaly detection). Real-time end-to-end visibility — so troubleshooting starts with data, not a CLI session.

When to engageYou're staring at a NetOps roadmap, hiring is harder than it should be, and the AI mandate has just landed on your team's desk.

Deliverable operating-model assessment, tooling recommendation, and a phased modernization plan.

02 / 03 · LIFECYCLE

Refresh Planning

Hardware and software refresh cycles staged to business risk windows. Includes downtime-free migration playbooks — hitless upgrades, parallel-fabric cutovers, traffic-bleed sequencing — so you never schedule a maintenance window your business can’t afford.

When to engageYou have hardware approaching end-of-support in the next 18 months, or you're consolidating data centers or contracts after a merger.

Deliverable refresh roadmap, cost projections, vendor positioning analysis, sequencing plan tied to budget cycles.

03 / 03 · RENEWAL

Vendor Renewal Review

Treat every renewal as a re-decision. We compare your incumbent’s roadmap, pricing, and ops fit against current market alternatives, then quantify the cost — real and switching — of staying vs. moving.

When to engageA major vendor contract is up for renewal in the next 30–180 days and your team doesn't have a clean answer to "is this still the right deal?"

Deliverable renewal recommendation (renew / renegotiate / replace), benchmark pricing, list of specific terms to challenge.

§ 02 — DIAGNOSTIC / PATTERNS

How high-stakes decisions go wrong

Common failure modes we see in late-stage infrastructure planning. Each is recoverable — but only if surfaced before commitment.

ARCHITECTURE

Vendor whitepapers as design

The proposed architecture is a vendor reference design lightly customized. Operability gaps and integration cost get discovered post-procurement, when the leverage is gone.

PROCUREMENT

RFPs that pre-pick the answer

Requirements written from a single vendor's product datasheet. Real differences between alternatives never surface; the evaluation rubber-stamps a decision already made.

OPERATIONS

Network ready, team isn't

The new fabric ships before the operating model. Engineers maintain it the old way; the architecture's promise quietly disappears into manual runbooks.

GOVERNANCE

Decisions without owners

Multi-vendor commitments approved without a single accountable executive. The first hard trade-off has no decider, and the program drifts to the loudest vendor.

§ 03 — ENGAGEMENT / PHASES

How engagements work

Phased advisory. Discovery is free. Each phase ends in a written deliverable you can act on without us.

PHASE I

Discovery

Decision framing · Free

PHASE II

Engagement

Architecture / vendor / commercial review

PHASE III

Decision support

Executive briefing · Risk-ranked recommendations

PHASE IV

Standby

Optional advisory through procurement & implementation

§ 04 — ENGAGEMENT / MODELS

How we work together

Three commercial structures, chosen so the engagement model matches the work — not the other way around.

MODEL I

Billable Hours

A vendor-neutral second opinion, fast. No retainer, no project minimum. Best for stress-testing a proposal, sanity-checking a design, or working through a discrete decision. Fits ad-hoc vendor evaluation, architecture review, and lifecycle support.

MODEL II

Project-Based

Scoped, priced, and delivered against a specific deliverable — a network design, RFP recommendation, compliance assessment, or AI-readiness roadmap. Fixed price in writing before any work begins. Fits strategic architecture, vendor evaluation, and security & compliance engagements.

MODEL III

Retainer

For clients who’d rather have senior advisory capacity reserved every month, a Retainer is available — a defined block of architect-level time for whatever the month brings: a vendor renewal, an architecture review before a board meeting, a quick read on a new product, ongoing oversight of an implementation partner. Best fit when you’d rather have a trusted voice on standby than wait until the next decision lands.

Decisions you can’t afford to get wrong deserve counsel that isn’t selling you something.

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