About us

Philosotech Ltd. provides systems consultancy for all sizes of IT systems, focused on performance and availability; application performance management; and service level agreements.

Philosotech was founded on a simple idea: that most of the problems organisations have with their systems aren't really about the technology, but rather are about understanding how it actually behaves under real conditions, and making sure the people who run it are held to their promises. Our team each has three or four decades in the industry, and we bring that depth to every engagement.

As an aside, a lot of small consultancies quote a figure for the total experience of their teams. We consider this to be bullshit at best, and possibly fraudulent at worst. We have access to around thirty time-served industry veterans with three or four decades of experience each. These are not employees, not partners in the practice, just people we can call on when their skills are relevant. Totalling that up to over 100 decades (or a full millennium!) of experience would maybe look superficially impressive, but it would be rather odd. Yet this is the calculation some companies would have you believe.

What we do

We work as senior consultants on the parts of a system where the business most needs it to be reliable and performant. Our practice is concentrated in four areas:

Performance & Availability

We help you prove that a system will do what it's supposed to do, before and after it goes live. That means load and stress testing on realistic workloads, identifying the bottlenecks that only show up at scale, and working with your team to tune the system, the infrastructure, and the code paths that matter. We consider the end-to-end flow of traffic in multi-tiered systems, ensuring any bottlenecks or failing components are identified early.

The goal is always the same: a system you can rely on when the load lands, and a clear, defensible answer to "will this cope?" (or, let's be honest, "why isn't this coping?").

Application Performance Management (APM)

Once a system is in service, you need to know what's happening to it in the moment. We help organisations select and specify the right APM and performance-observability toolset for their estate, and put it to work: tracing slow requests across tiers, surfacing regressions early, and feeding the data back into development and operations so problems are caught before users feel them. Where useful, we also help stand up the DevOps-style feedback loop between the teams that build and the teams that run.

SLA Negotiation & Enforcement

A service-level agreement is only as good as the definitions, tests, and remedies behind it. We advise clients on what to commit to, how to measure it, and how to prove it - and we work on both sides of the table. For clients, we help you design an SLA that is actually achievable and testable, and put in the procedures to hold a supplier to it. For suppliers, we help you shape terms you can meet and demonstrate compliance without a fight. The result is a calmer, more productive relationship between all parties.

Forensic Performance Investigation

We are big believers in Application Profiling, capturing the conversations between tiers and picking them apart in forensic detail to pinpoint areas of weak performance. To an extent this approach has now been subsumed into modern APM packages, but there is still sometimes a need to reach for Wireshark and a strong cup of coffee.

How we work

• Senior, hands-on consulting - the person you meet is the person doing the work.
• Breadth across platforms and sectors, with depth where it counts.
• Clear communication to both technical and business audiences at every level.
• Work delivered under pressure, on time, with documentation you can stand behind.

We have clients all across local and central government, defence, finance, media, retail, legal, and other sectors. We're happy to talk through what you're dealing with and whether we're the right fit.