IT Consulting in San Francisco
NetSys provides IT consulting to businesses in San Francisco: written assessments, roadmaps with real numbers, cloud and Microsoft 365 migrations, network designs, compliance programs and a virtual CIO who stays for the quarterly review. Engineers since 1998, not a sales deck.
The short answer
NetSys provides IT consulting in San Francisco: assessments, technology roadmaps with costs, Microsoft 365 and Azure migrations, network and office designs, security and compliance programs and virtual CIO reviews. Assessments and projects have agreed milestones, change windows, acceptance checks and a handover. Work is coordinated from Brooklyn, with on-site visits scoped and scheduled in advance. Implementation can lead to a separate ongoing management agreement; a consulting project does not automatically include a staffed help desk.
Service information by The NetSys Group. Our editorial standards.
How IT consulting is delivered in San Francisco
San Francisco is served from Brooklyn, three hours behind us on Pacific time. Assessment, design and integration work is coordinated from Brooklyn, with meetings and change windows stated in Pacific time. The project has agreed milestones, acceptance checks and a handover. Ongoing monitoring and help desk require a separately defined managed scope. On-site commitments outside our on-site coverage (New York City, Long Island, Westchester, the Hudson Valley, North Jersey and Fairfield County, CT) are arranged in advance and sized to the engagement: a mostly remote engagement needs no dedicated on-site engineer, while an engagement that calls for regular presence, such as vCISO work with someone on site two days a week, can include a dedicated engineer with a drive time generally under an hour once availability, location and the visit schedule are confirmed in the proposal. Hardware can ship pre-configured where the project permits remote setup. Confirm landlord access, circuit diversity, cabling and equipment space before approving a network change. Carrier options to check in San Francisco include Comcast Business, AT&T Business Fiber, Sonic and Monkeybrains; availability, routing and installation dates must be verified at your address before a failover design is approved.
Who IT consulting in San Francisco is built for
Businesses we can support in and around the Financial District, SoMa, Mission Bay, the Presidio and Oakland include venture-backed startups and professional firms on Rippling, venture and financial firms on Carta, law firms on NetDocuments, biotech companies in Mission Bay on Benchling, foundations and nonprofits on Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, and agencies on HubSpot. These are examples of business and application needs, not a list of local clients. We coordinate infrastructure, identity and integration with the application vendor, and identify any compliance requirements during discovery. Companies with an internal IT person can agree a split of responsibilities, systems and coverage hours before work begins.
Continuity planning for your San Francisco business
Start with the systems your team cannot work without. Record the impact of a building power outage, a failed internet circuit, a compromised account and an unavailable application vendor. Then agree recovery priorities, an independent access path, protected backup copies and a test for each critical workflow. Controls reduce particular risks; they do not guarantee that an incident cannot happen.
IT Consulting in San Francisco: what NetSys delivers
Assessment and roadmap
- A written assessment of every system, account, vendor and risk, produced from discovery rather than a questionnaire
- A 12-to-36-month technology roadmap with costs, sequencing and the decisions that depend on each other
- Budget modeling that compares an on-premises refresh with Microsoft 365, Azure and Azure Virtual Desktop on the same basis
- Vendor and contract review: licensing, ISP, telecom, software and support agreements, with what to cancel and what to renegotiate
Projects, designed and run
- Microsoft 365 and Azure migrations planned around identity first, with Entra ID, Conditional Access and Intune designed before data moves
- Network and office designs: Cisco Meraki or Fortinet firewalls, segmentation, Wi-Fi and failover, specified before the fit-out starts
- Security and compliance programs mapped to the standard you answer to, whether HIPAA, NYDFS Part 500, CMMC 2.0, SOC 2 or a cyber insurer's questionnaire
- Project management with a named engineer, a written plan, acceptance checks and a cutover that happens outside business hours
Ongoing advisory
- Virtual CIO service: a quarterly review with leadership covering risk, spend, projects and what changed
- IT due diligence for acquisitions, leases and vendor decisions, with findings in writing
- Line-of-business application decisions coordinated with the vendor, from CRM selection (Salesforce, HubSpot, GoHighLevel) to ERP
- An engineer who knows your environment on call for the decisions that come up between reviews
A 68-person professional services firm in Oakland
This planning example shows how we could scope the work. It is not a claim about a customer in this market or a measured result. For published customer work, see our case studies.
A 68-seat professional services firm in Oakland that is about to sign an acquisition. Two offices run on two different systems and leadership wants one. The target uses Rippling, but nobody has reviewed the application configuration, access, integrations or supporting infrastructure. The licenses and contracts are in a drawer, and the buyer needs a number for what it will cost to bring the two together before closing.
- Virtual CIO cadence set: quarterly reviews with a roadmap, a budget and a change log, starting at the 90-day mark
- Rapid7 InsightVM scan of the external and internal footprint, so the roadmap starts from measured exposure rather than assumptions
- SharePoint information architecture designed by function and role before the file migration, so permissions follow the business rather than whoever created a folder
- A written security program mapped to the framework in play, with the control, the evidence and the owner listed for each requirement
- Project plan with a named engineer, acceptance checks for each phase and a cutover scheduled outside business hours
- A handover document that says what was built, what was decided and why, so the next person does not start from zero
Leadership gets a written assessment, a roadmap with costs and the order to do things in, and an engineer who stays on for the quarterly reviews. Decisions stop being made from vendor quotes. Consulting is priced by the project, and ongoing advisory runs month to month.
Large international food importer: the whole platform rebuilt in Azure
An extreme weather event knocked out power and connectivity to a food importer's building and cut a 120-person, three-warehouse business off from suppliers and clients worldwide for days. NetSys ran a two-week assessment of every workload with recovery objectives per system and a cost model comparing an on-premises refresh with Azure, designed a landing zone with hub-and-spoke networks and Entra ID Conditional Access, lifted the SQL environment to Azure SQL Managed Instance, rebuilt file shares on Azure Files, published applications through Azure Virtual Desktop, connected the warehouses by VPN, and layered Defender for Endpoint, Exchange Online Protection and immutable backups on top. The migration took ten weeks with a weekend cut-over.
IT consulting work for other clients
- Insurance
Insurance brokerage relocating its headquarters
Deployment of 40 workstations, installation of 60 network drops, firewall setup, and office Wi-Fi configuration.
Office Relocation IT ServicesIT for Insurance Agencies and Brokers
- Real estate
Commercial property management company
SharePoint migration of 800 GB of leases, vendor records, and property documents, with separate access permissions for 12 property teams.
SharePoint & OneDrive MigrationIT for Real Estate and Property Management
- Accounting firms
Corporate accounting firm
Migration of 2 TB of business data to Azure, secure remote access for 42 employees, and backup and recovery configuration.
Client names are withheld. These examples were chosen for the work involved, not for where the client is, so none is presented as a San Francisco client.
Compliance in San Francisco: California’s breach-notification statute and what sits on top of it
California Civil Code § 1798.82 requires notice for qualifying breaches of residents’ personal information. A person or business required to notify more than 500 California residents must also submit a sample notice to the Attorney General. These breach duties are distinct from the CCPA’s consumer-rights applicability tests. The service scope should identify the records, access controls, retention settings and incident evidence your business needs; your legal or compliance adviser determines which requirements apply. Consulting engagements map each requirement to a control, an owner and the evidence an auditor or insurer will ask for, before anything is bought. Discovery identifies missing records and assigns the documentation work. Applicable duties depend on the business, data, exemptions and contracts; your legal or compliance adviser determines which requirements apply.
Primary sources
What IT consulting costs in San Francisco
Consulting is priced by the project or by the review rather than by the hour: an assessment has a fixed price based on the size of the environment, a migration is quoted from the workload inventory, and virtual CIO advisory is a monthly figure that scales with how many reviews and decisions a year you need. What moves the number is the number of systems and sites, the compliance standard in play and whether we are also managing the environment afterwards. Every quote is written from discovery, and the terms run month to month.
Who this fits, and who it does not
Best fit: 10 to 150 employees, a decision on the table that involves cloud, an office move, an acquisition, a compliance program or a system nobody trusts, and leadership that wants options with numbers rather than a sales deck.
Not a fit: businesses looking for staff augmentation by the hour, or projects where the outcome has already been decided and only a signature is wanted. We consult to reach the right answer, which sometimes means telling you not to buy something.
Read next
Industry pages: IT for Professional Services & Consulting · IT for Financial Services
Terms used on this page: Virtual CIO (vCIO) · Microsoft Entra ID · Zero Trust
Guides: the cloud migration questions owners ask most · Google Workspace versus Microsoft 365 for a small business
Related pages
Read the full IT Consulting service page. See everything NetSys delivers in Palo Alto, CA.
Also in San Francisco: Managed IT Services · IT Support
IT Consulting elsewhere: Los Angeles · San Diego · San Jose · Sacramento · Irvine · Orange County
Related services: Azure Cloud Migration · Virtual CIO (vCIO) · Microsoft 365 Migration · IT Due Diligence Services
IT Consulting in San Francisco: FAQs
Can you do IT due diligence on a company we are buying?
Yes. We inventory the target's accounts, licenses, contracts, backups and security posture, and report the three risks that need a price before closing. Findings are in writing and the review is scoped to the transaction timetable.
What does an IT consulting engagement in San Francisco look like?
It starts with discovery of every system, account, vendor and risk, produces a written assessment and roadmap with costs, and then either ends there or continues into the projects the roadmap calls for and a quarterly virtual CIO review. You get findings in writing at every stage, and the engineer who did the assessment runs the projects.
Can you help us choose between Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace?
Yes, and the answer depends on the applications your team actually uses, the security controls you need and whether you can mix license tiers. We run the three-task trial described in our comparison guide, price both on the same basis and write up a recommendation with the migration effort included.
Do you have an office in San Francisco?
Our office is in Brooklyn, NY. San Francisco is served from Brooklyn, three hours behind us on Pacific time. Outside our on-site coverage the on-site arrangement is agreed before the engagement starts and sized to what it needs: none for a mostly remote account, or a dedicated engineer where regular presence such as vCISO work with someone on site two days a week is part of the scope. A drive time generally under an hour is an option subject to confirming engineer availability and your address. The help desk is staffed seven days a week from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time (1 a.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific), with emergency service 24/7. The proposal states the on-site arrangement and any travel in writing, and the agreement runs month to month.
How can IT support help with California data-security requirements?
California Civil Code § 1798.82 requires notice for qualifying breaches of residents’ personal information. A person or business required to notify more than 500 California residents must also submit a sample notice to the Attorney General. These breach duties are distinct from the CCPA’s consumer-rights applicability tests. NetSys can help document the relevant systems, controls and incident evidence within an agreed scope; legal notification decisions remain with your authorized business and legal team.
Bring the decision you are stuck on.
A cloud move, a merger, a compliance deadline, a system nobody trusts. Tell us what you run and what has to change, and an engineer comes back with an assessment, options with real numbers and the order to do them in.