I build and run the platforms your business depends on.
Independent platform engineer. Cloud infrastructure, integrations and the security around them, for companies too small for an IT department and too reliant on their systems to leave them to chance.
- 1988
- The year I started with databases. It meant dBase III+ and Clipper.
- 1990
- Running Unix on Minix. Linux didn't exist yet.
- 1996
- My first client website went live. I still manage it.
- 2000
- The year I started on the platform I still run. Twenty-six years, and three rebuilds to keep pace with the technology and the scale.
The situation
You have systems you can't afford to lose and nobody whose job it is to look after them.
Most companies your size are in the same position. The platform works, until it doesn't. The person who set it up left. The hosting is somewhere, the domain is somewhere else, and nobody is quite sure who has the passwords.
It's fine right up to the morning it isn't.
I'm the person you call before that morning. Sometimes on it.
What I do
Three things, and I'd rather be clear about the boundaries than list twenty.
Cloud infrastructure and operations
Keeping production systems up, which is the part most people find out is hard afterwards.
- AWS architecture and multi-server estates
- Cloudflare, Linux, database performance
- Backup, disaster recovery, security hardening
Integration and data
Your website, your accounts package, your CRM and your supplier's feed don't talk to each other.
- PHP, REST and SOAP APIs
- MySQL, MariaDB, Aurora
- Migrations and reporting pipelines
AI, applied properly
On your infrastructure, against your data. Not a wrapper around someone else's API.
- Production AI built on AWS services
- Runs inside your own environment
- Designed by someone who knows the database underneath
The longest one
Twenty-six years. 150,000 students. Very little drama.
Since 2000 I've been the consultant responsible for the hosting behind Wahoo Learning's training platform, and for a good deal of its development. It serves around 150,000 learners and more than 4,000 partners, in over 130 countries. CommScope's then VP of Education Services described "very few issues or downtime" across the twenty years he worked with it.
Those numbers are Wahoo's own, published on their website, including the start date. You don't have to take my word for any of it, which is rather the point.
I don't own that platform. I'm the person who keeps it running.
That's the job I'm offering you.
- 2000Partnership with CommScope since
- 150,000Active learners
- 4,000+Partners
- 50,000+Annual enrolments
- 130+Countries
- 750%Partner revenue increase
Every figure here is Wahoo's own published number, checkable in about thirty seconds. A number you can check is worth more than a bigger one you can't.
The shape of the business
I've never had many clients. I've kept the ones I have for decades.
- Fifteen years
- Twenty years
- Twenty-six years
- Thirty years
That is not a sales record and I'm not going to present it as one. It's the actual shape of the business. I take on a small number of clients and I stay with them.
If you want an agency with a large portfolio and a project manager, there are good ones and I'll happily point you at them. If you want one person who will still know how your system works in 2035, that's this.
In their words
Three people who have worked with me for a long time.
"With Julian managing the maintenance of our sites, I am completely confident that they remain up-to-date, secure and running smoothly. I know I can rely on Julian and trust he can deliver what we need quickly and effectively."
"Julian has managed our hosting and Internet Security for nearly 20 years."
"I couldn't be happier with my website since partnering with Dalaric."
Getting started
How this usually starts
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Book a call.
Thirty minutes on a video call, free, no pitch. You tell me what you've got and what's worrying you.
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I look at it properly.
If it needs more than a conversation, that's a technical review, scoped and quoted before anything starts. Consultancy prices exclude VAT.
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You get it in writing.
Findings, prioritised, with costed options. Including the option of doing nothing, when that's the right answer.
No obligation beyond the review. If you want me to fix what I find, I'll quote it. If you'd rather take the document to someone else, take it.