Frequently Asked Questions

Critical Cloud is a cloud support company specialising in AWS, Azure, and hybrid environments. We provide 24/7 cloud operations, incident management, and proactive monitoring tailored for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), ensuring you maintain full control over your cloud environment.

Our services are specifically designed for tech-focused SMBs, including businesses in SaaS, FinTech, HealthTech, e-commerce, and more. We support companies looking for reliable, cost-optimised cloud operations.

We’re based in the UK but offer 24/7 global support for businesses across the UK, USA, and worldwide. Our cloud operations teams are distributed globally to ensure seamless service delivery.

Critical Cloud isn’t just another Managed Service Provider (MSP), we are a cloud-first company built for modern businesses. While traditional MSPs often focus on legacy IT with cloud services as an afterthought, we specialise exclusively in cloud-native solutions.

Here’s what sets us apart:

Cloud-First Expertise:

Unlike MSPs that “add” cloud as a service, we’re 100% cloud-focused, with deep knowledge of AWS, Azure, and hybrid environments.

AI-Driven Proactive Support:

We use predictive AIOps tools like Datadog, Squadcast, and Freddy AI to identify and resolve issues before they impact your business.

Personalised Engagement:

Every client gets named engineers dedicated to their account, ensuring continuity, deep understanding, and proactive collaboration.

Transparent Cost Control:

You maintain direct relationships with cloud vendors, keeping full control over your cloud spend—no hidden markups like traditional MSPs.

Continuous Optimisation:

We don’t stop at incident response. Our improvement hours are built into every engagement, driving ongoing performance and cost efficiencies.

We’re not just here to fix problems—we’re here to help your cloud environment grow, scale, and evolve with your business.

Traditional IT support is often reactive, focusing on fixing issues after they occur. Critical Cloud takes a proactive, cloud-native approach, combining AI automation with expert-led Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) to prevent incidents before they happen. Our services are designed to optimise performance, reduce costs, and ensure 24/7 reliability.

Yes! Unlike traditional MSPs that rotate support staff, Critical Cloud assigns named engineers to every client. This ensures you work with experts who understand your environment, know your business goals, and deliver consistent, proactive support.

While MSPs often rely on reactive support, Critical Cloud uses AI-driven incident management.  This predictive approach allows us to:

• Detect issues early
• Automate incident triage
• Respond faster with familiar on-call engineers

We operate as a support partner, not a managed service provider. This means you maintain ownership of your cloud platform, vendor contracts, and monitoring tools. Our role is to enhance your existing setup with expert guidance and support.

Traditional MSPs often add markups or require you to purchase cloud services through them, which limits cost visibility. At Critical Cloud:

• You maintain direct billing with your cloud provider.
• We focus on cloud cost optimisation, using data-driven insights to reduce waste and improve efficiency.
• Our strategies help clients save up to 25% on cloud expenses without sacrificing performance.

We offer a range of AI-powered cloud support services, including:

• S = Critical Support → Incident Management + Improvement Engineering
  
• R = Critical Response → Incident Management only (fast, reactive)
  
• E = Critical Engineering → On-demand / fractional SRE & DevOps expertise

Incident Management only. (fast, reactive)

24/7 incident response for your mission-critical platforms. No ticket queues. No handoffs. Just real-time support from engineers who know your stack.

Incident Management + Improvement Engineering.

Ongoing support with real engineers focused on fixing what's breaking and improving what matters. Expert-led, proactive, and always on.

On-demand / fractional SRE & DevOps expertise.

Plug in expert cloud engineers when and where you need them. Ideal for migrations, architecture reviews, automation, scaling, and more.

Yes, we provide expert support for AWS, Microsoft Azure, and hybrid cloud environments. Our team is certified in both platforms, ensuring optimal performance, security, and cost efficiency.

We achieve 24/7 cloud support through a combination of:

• Global Operations Teams - Distributed experts available around the clock
  
• AI-Powered Monitoring - Real-time alerts and automated responses
• Incident Response Playbooks - Custom workflows for rapid escalation

Improvement hours are dedicated time blocks included in every Critical Cloud plan to drive continuous optimisation. Unlike MSPs that focus solely on reactive support, we proactively:

• Review performance metrics
• Optimise cloud architectures
• Implement cost-saving measures
• Enhance security and compliance

Our on-call engineers aren’t strangers to your environment. Unlike MSPs that rely on offshore or pooled resources, our team includes engineers who are familiar with your systems, ensuring faster diagnosis and resolution during after-hours incidents.

Yes! We’re designed to help businesses scale efficiently through automation, AI-driven workflows, and cloud-native architecture. Whether you’re growing your user base, expanding globally, or launching new products, Critical Cloud can help you scale without compromising reliability.

Yes, we offer continuous compliance monitoring and security support, helping you adhere to industry standards and best practices while you retain control over security policies and decisions.

The Augmented Intelligence Model (AIM) is our internal framework that combines intelligent automation with human expertise to enhance service delivery. While not a product we sell, AIM enables us to provide faster, more reliable support, benefiting your operations without altering your existing platform.

AIM enhances cloud operations by:

• Automating Repetitive Tasks: Reducing manual workload for faster issue resolution
• Predictive Analytics: Identifying potential risks before they escalate
• Intelligent Decision Support: Empowering engineers with real-time insights for better outcomes

While AIM incorporates AIOps principles, it goes beyond traditional AIOps by integrating human expertise into the decision-making process. It’s a co-pilot model where AI and engineers work together to optimise reliability and performance.

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is a discipline that ensures systems are scalable, reliable, and efficient. We apply SRE best practices to:

• Improve Uptime: Through proactive monitoring and incident automation.
• Optimise Performance: Using data-driven SLIs/SLOs.
• Enhance Reliability: Via continuous testing and resilience engineering.

Absolutely. Our team specialises in managing hybrid and multi-cloud environments, ensuring seamless operations across platforms like AWS, Azure, and on-premises infrastructures.

Our pricing is flexible, with options for:

• Pay-As-You-Go Plans: Ideal for startups or businesses needing flexible support
• Fixed Monthly Plans: For predictable, consistent support
• Custom Pricing: Tailored solutions based on specific business needs

No, we offer flexible contract options. While annual plans offer cost savings, we also provide month-to-month contracts with no long-term commitments.