Technology Roadmap
3-year plan tied to your business goals. Infrastructure lifecycle, software refresh, cloud strategy, and security maturity milestones.
IT Consulting · Vancouver, BC
IT Consulting Vancouver
Hexafusion offers IT consulting in Vancouver for business leaders who need strategic technology guidance without hiring a full-time CIO. Our virtual CIO service delivers roadmap planning, vendor evaluation, risk management, and budget forecasting from a team that works with BC businesses.
What vCIO Services Include
IT Budget Planning
Annual IT budget development with capital vs operating expense breakdown, priority ranking, and contingency reserves for unplanned work.
Vendor Evaluation
Independent review of software, hardware, and service vendors. Request for proposal (RFP) support, contract negotiation guidance, and total cost of ownership analysis.
Risk Management
Annual risk assessments, cyber insurance guidance, disaster recovery planning, and business impact analysis.
Technology Business Reviews
Quarterly executive reviews covering ticket trends, security posture, budget vs actuals, and upcoming initiatives.
IT Compliance Advisory
PIPEDA, BC PIPA, SOC 2, PCI DSS readiness. Gap analysis, remediation plans, and audit coordination (we do not provide legal or compliance opinions).
Who Needs IT Consulting?
- Companies growing past 20 staff where tech decisions start affecting multiple departments
- Organizations preparing for compliance audits (SOC 2, PIPEDA, industry-specific)
- Executives who want independent strategic input, not sales pitches from product vendors
- Businesses planning a major change: office move, cloud migration, acquisition, rapid hiring
- Teams evaluating IT providers and wanting an informed second opinion
- Boards and owners who want quarterly visibility into technology risk and spend
Included on Managed IT Plans
vCIO services are included on our Professional and Enterprise managed IT plans. Standalone consulting engagements are also available for project-based work like cloud migrations, audit prep, and M&A IT due diligence.
See what is included in each plan
When to bring in a virtual CIO
Most BC businesses under 20 staff get along fine with a managed-IT provider for day-to-day operations. The cost of a dedicated CIO only makes sense once technology decisions start affecting multiple teams or the cost of getting one wrong is high. Common triggers we see:
Compliance pressure
SOC 2, PIPEDA, FINTRAC, or industry-specific regulators are asking for evidence of controls you don't yet have documented. A vCIO maps the gap and runs the remediation program.
Cyber insurance renewal
Your underwriter is asking new questions every year. We translate the questionnaire into concrete projects, then sign off on the technical-controls section of the application.
Major change events
Office move, acquisition, hiring sprint, or new line of business. We sequence the technology work so the change does not turn into a year of post-go-live firefighting.
Vendor or product evaluation
Independent review when sales teams are pitching you on shiny platforms. We write the RFP, score the bids on your criteria, and tell you which one to pick.
Existing provider review
You are not sure your current managed-services provider is doing the job. We audit the environment, the contract, and the response logs, then deliver a written assessment with options.
Board reporting
Your board or insurance carrier wants quarterly technology and security reports. We produce them in plain English with the metrics and risk language non-technical readers actually need.
How a vCIO engagement typically works
Engagements start with a four-to-six-week discovery and design phase, then move into a recurring monthly cadence. We document everything, so when an engagement ends the deliverables remain useful to whoever takes over.
- Week 1 to 2. Discovery. Inventory of systems, vendors, contracts, security controls, business-process dependencies. Stakeholder interviews. Risk register opened.
- Week 3 to 4. Assessment. Maturity scoring against a recognised baseline (NIST CSF for security, ITIL practices for operations). Gap report with quantified business impact.
- Week 5 to 6. Roadmap. Three-year plan with annualised budget, project sequencing, and dependency map. Reviewed with leadership, signed off.
- Month 2 onwards. Monthly working sessions to track delivery, quarterly business reviews with the executive team, ad-hoc availability for vendor calls and incident response.
Common deliverables you keep
- Three-year technology roadmap with annual capital and operating-expense forecast
- Risk register with quantified business impact for each open item
- Vendor inventory, contract end-dates, and renewal calendar
- Security maturity scorecard tied to NIST CSF or ISO 27001 Annex A
- Disaster-recovery and business-continuity plan with documented recovery-time objective (RTO) and recovery-point objective (RPO) targets
- Quarterly board-ready report templates with the metrics already populated
- Standard operating procedures for incident response, change management, vendor onboarding
Frequently asked questions
What does a virtual CIO actually do day-to-day?
Strategic input, not ticket work. We attend leadership meetings as the technology voice, review vendor proposals before you sign them, run quarterly security and budget reviews, and act as the escalation point when something complex needs an experienced opinion. Day-to-day support is handled by our managed-IT team or your existing provider.
How is this different from hiring a full-time CIO?
Cost and breadth. Hiring a senior CIO is rarely justified for businesses under 200 staff who don't have enough technology decisions to keep one fully occupied. A virtual CIO is fractional and brings cross-industry pattern recognition because we see this work across many businesses at once. You get the seniority without the headcount commitment.
Can we use you only for a specific project?
Yes. Cloud migration, M&A IT due diligence, audit preparation, RFP for a new platform, post-incident review. Standalone consulting engagements are fixed scope and fixed price.
Do you provide legal or compliance opinions?
No. We design and implement technical controls and document the evidence. Whether the resulting posture satisfies a specific regulator is a question for legal counsel. We work alongside your privacy lawyer, compliance officer, or external auditor.
How are engagements priced?
Included as part of our Professional and Enterprise managed-IT plans. Standalone vCIO retainers are available on a monthly retainer basis after a scoping conversation. Project-based work is fixed price after a discovery week. Reach out for a tailored quote.
Need strategic IT guidance?
Book a discovery call with a Hexafusion consultant. We will review your current state and identify where a vCIO engagement would add the most value.
Book a consulting callRelated services
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Service areas across Metro Vancouver
Related Hexafusion resources
Deep-dive pages on the cybersecurity and compliance topics referenced above.
Hexafusion at a glance. Vancouver-based since 2020 · downtown office at 997 Seymour Street · Dell authorized reseller · Microsoft Solutions Partner · founder is a former PCI DSS Internal Security Assessor · on-site service across 14 Lower Mainland municipalities · flat-rate managed plans with a 60-second initial ticket response and a 15-minute engineer reply during business hours.
Compliance baseline behind every Hexafusion engagement
It consulting and virtual cio engagements is delivered against a documented baseline aligned to the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security baseline controls and current cyber-insurance underwriting expectations. The same baseline applies whether you are a five-person clinic or a 200-seat manufacturer.
- Identity and access: Microsoft Entra ID with Conditional Access, multi-factor authentication (MFA) enforced on every account, compliant-device sign-in.
- Endpoint protection: Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) on every device, deployed before the user receives the laptop.
- Disk encryption: BitLocker on Windows, FileVault on Mac, with central key escrow.
- Backup and recovery: Managed backups with documented retention and quarterly restore tests.
- BC PIPA and PIPEDA aware: Audit logging, role-based access, and breach-notification process kept current with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada guidance.
Hardware lifecycle and responsible disposal
Hexafusion is a Dell authorized reseller with Canadian distribution channels for Lenovo, Apple, Microsoft Surface, and networking gear. At end-of-life, drive sanitization follows NIST Special Publication 800-88, every retired device generates a serial-numbered certificate of destruction for your PIPEDA records, and devices are recycled through programs accredited by the Electronic Products Recycling Association (EPRA Canada).
Who you actually work with
Hexafusion is led by founder Alex Barari, a former PCI DSS Internal Security Assessor with 15+ years in enterprise IT and cybersecurity. Every engagement is supported by the same Vancouver-based team that designs the security baseline, reviews the alerts, and shows up on-site when remote troubleshooting reaches its limit. Our quarterly business review (QBR) turns the relationship into a real strategic conversation with cited numbers, not a marketing newsletter.
What our IT consulting engagement actually looks like
Every new IT consulting client follows the same documented onboarding. Day one is an environment discovery call where we map every account, device, license, and dependency. By the end of the first week we have a written security baseline diff (what is currently in place, what is missing, what gets remediated in which order). By day 30 you have a complete documentation bundle: network diagram, asset register, license inventory, MFA coverage report, backup test results, and incident response runbook. None of that is sold as an extra; it is the starting condition for every managed engagement.
During steady-state operations you can expect a 60-second initial ticket response and a 15-minute engineer reply during business hours, with after-hours emergency coverage available on Professional and Enterprise plans. Every quarter we deliver a Quarterly Business Review (QBR) as a PDF: engagement health score, financial recap, onboarding progress, renewal calendar, and an AI-summarized executive paragraph. The QBR makes drift impossible to hide: if a metric slides for two quarters in a row, you see it before we do, and we are already working on it by the time you read it.
Commitments we make in writing
- Flat monthly pricing. No hourly billing for in-scope work. The price you sign for is the price you pay until annual renewal.
- Documented service level agreements (SLAs). Initial response, engineer engagement, and resolution targets in writing for every plan tier.
- Transparent offboarding. If the relationship ever ends, you receive 30 days of transition support and full documentation handover. No hostage data, no exit fees.
- No surprise project invoices. Work outside scope is quoted in advance, with the option to approve, defer, or decline before any billable time accrues.
- Vendor-coordinated escalations. When the issue is on Microsoft, Telus, Rogers, Veeam, or any other vendor we manage on your behalf, we own the support case from open to resolved, not you.
- Continuity of the same team. The engineer who onboards you is the engineer who answers your tickets in month 12, barring unusual staff changes that are communicated in writing in advance.
IT consulting questions Vancouver businesses ask us
How long until we are fully migrated to the new IT consulting setup? Most IT consulting engagements complete environment discovery, security baseline, and the bulk of remediation work within the first 30 days. Larger or more regulated environments (legal, healthcare, financial services) may stretch baseline tasks into a 60- or 90-day window so audit-quality documentation is built alongside the changes.
What if our existing IT person stays involved? Co-managed engagements are common. We document the boundary in your Statement of Work (SOW): which tickets we own, which they own, what escalation looks like, and which systems we both have administrative access to. The split shows up in your monthly invoice as named workstreams so nobody pays twice for the same coverage.
How do you measure whether IT consulting is actually working for our business? The engagement health score on every QBR rolls up signal from invoice payment timing, ticket response adherence, backup test pass rate, MFA coverage, patch latency, and renewal cadence into a 0-100 indicator. Green is above 80, yellow is 60 to 79, red is below 60. If your score drops below 80 for two consecutive quarters we trigger an internal review and reach out before you do.