Questions, with real benchmarks.

A carve-out separates a divested business from the IT its parent used to provide. The work starts with application and dependency analysis — establishing what the business actually consumes from the parent, which is rarely what the org chart suggests. From there: target-state design for the standalone environment, a data migration strategy, and cutover sequencing against the contractual close date. Delivery runs through Day 1 readiness and into Day 2 operations, including TSA exit before the transition services agreement expires.

Day 1 is the first day the divested business trades as a standalone company. Day 1 readiness means its infrastructure, applications and data are running on its own environment, not the parent's, and staff can work without interruption. It is a binary, date-driven test tied to the close date — the business either operates on Day 1 or it does not. On a global data center separation delivered as Technical Principal, Go-Live ran in a 28-hour window with zero technology incidents and 100% of data migrated.

As a defined-scope engagement producing a written findings package: allocation and tagging review, commitment coverage analysis (reserved instances and savings plans), storage lifecycle review, and identification of unallocated and orphaned spend — mapped to the FinOps Foundation framework and FOCUS™ reporting. Findings are ranked by recoverable value against implementation effort. Track record: 18% AWS spend reduction, $884K annualized, achieved as SVP of Cloud Operations at a FinTech and digital banking platform.

By applying financial accountability to every dollar of cloud spend rather than treating the bill as fixed. Cost allocation first — tagging and categorization under the FOCUS™ specification — then commitment optimization (reserved instances and savings plans against steady-state usage), right-sizing, storage lifecycle redesign, and automated shutdown for non-production. In practice, storage lifecycle redesign alone delivered a 31% S3 reduction worth $215K per year, in-house.

Redundant and underutilized licences, auto-renewal escalators that were never benchmarked, overlapping capability across tools bought by different teams, and SLA terms that are not being enforced. The remedy is governance rather than a one-off cut: a $4.2M annual IT vendor portfolio directed to 98% SLA compliance and a 15% year-over-year cost reduction.

Yes — as an owner of that posture, not an auditor of it. SOC 2 and PCI-DSS ownership for a regulated FinTech and digital banking platform, including control mapping, evidence automation, automated security guardrails, and reporting risk and compliance to the Board and Information Security Committee. Note: no security certifications are held or claimed; this is operating accountability, not a certification credential.

FinTech, banking and regulated financial services, plus private-equity portfolio companies undergoing separation. These share the same pressures — high cloud spend, strict compliance obligations, and date-driven change with no tolerance for downtime.

It ensures operational continuity when key technology leaders depart — retirement, M&A transitions, restructuring. Without it, organizations lose undocumented knowledge, vendor relationships and roadmap context at once. The work is documenting the roadmap, cross-training teams, preserving vendor continuity, and building governance that survives a change in leadership.

With a no-obligation conversation, then a defined-scope assessment — a cloud cost assessment, a vendor portfolio review, or a separation readiness review. The assessment produces a written findings package that stands on its own, whether or not anything follows it.

An MSP manages infrastructure. A consultant delivers a report and leaves. This is executive accountability for an outcome — the same accountability held as SVP of Cloud Operations and as Technical Principal on carve-out separations, engaged against a defined scope.

By scope. An assessment is a fixed, defined-scope engagement. A separation or migration programme is priced against the programme through Day 1 and Day 2 handover. Retained advisory runs on a monthly cadence. Scope is agreed in writing before work starts.

FractCIO is based in Charlotte, NC and serves clients across the United States. Engagements run remotely with on-site availability where a cutover or Go-Live requires it.

Most begin within two weeks of the initial discovery call. Separation programmes are sequenced backwards from the close date, so the earlier that date is known, the more of the dependency analysis can be done before it constrains the cutover window.