Industry solution

IT, Cloud & Managed Services

Know what you run, what it costs, and who fixes it when it breaks

Inventory, CMDB, licenses, cloud spend, patching and on-call, joined up for infrastructure teams and managed service providers.

Products
8
Challenges
6
Concepts
15
Talk to us about IT & CloudAsk a question
Engineers at a managed service provider reviewing an infrastructure dependency map, patch progress and cloud costs on large monitors
AdapterCloud(opens AdapterCloud in a new tab)AssetHandler(opens AssetHandler in a new tab)Subscriber Bot(opens Subscriber Bot in a new tab)VibeControls(opens VibeControls in a new tab)FluidGrids(opens FluidGrids in a new tab)Botlit(opens Botlit in a new tab)BigConsole(opens BigConsole in a new tab)TimeCampus(opens TimeCampus in a new tab)

The problem

Why running an estate got harder, not easier

The estate lives in several clouds, a colocation cage, dozens of SaaS admin panels and a CMDB nobody trusts. Every question about cost, ownership or blast radius starts days of spreadsheet archaeology.

Many infrastructure teams now run across more than one public cloud, several Kubernetes clusters, a colocation or on-prem footprint and a long tail of SaaS tenants. Each has its own console, its own identity model and its own bill. The inventory is a spreadsheet exported last quarter, and the CMDB was accurate the week it was loaded. When a change goes wrong, the first half hour of the incident is spent working out what depends on what.

Spend and licensing have drifted out of IT's hands. Engineers create resources in minutes, teams buy SaaS on corporate cards, and renewals roll over on notice periods nobody tracked. FinOps practitioners chase untagged spend line by line, and software asset managers rebuild an effective license position by hand every time a vendor sends an audit letter.

Managed service providers carry all of this multiplied by every client, usually on fixed-fee contracts with thin margins. Their engineers switch between client estates all day, patch windows stack up after every critical advisory, and the quarterly business review is assembled from five exports the night before. The individual tools are rarely the problem; the gaps between them are.

Who this is for

  • Head of infrastructure or platform

    One live inventory and dependency map across clouds, clusters and on-prem, so change risk and ownership are answers rather than guesses.

  • MSP service delivery director

    Forty client estates run with one operating model, clean separation between clients, and SLAs and hours visible per client.

  • FinOps lead or cloud cost owner

    Spend attributed to resources and owners, untagged cost shrinking, and a month-end showback that budget holders accept.

  • IT and software asset manager

    A CMDB that matches reality, a license position ready before the true-up, and seats reclaimed soon after a leaver exits.

  • SRE or on-call engineer

    Runbooks that find you at 3 a.m., a safe way to pull in a senior engineer, and patch windows that do not end in pages.

  • IT security and compliance lead

    Shadow IT found before it holds sensitive data, drift and waivers with a reason on record, and one audit trail across tools.

A day in the life

The story behind the solution

A week at an MSP that runs forty client estates

Nadia's team looks after about forty client estates: three public clouds between them, two colocation cages, hundreds of Windows and Linux servers and more SaaS tenants than anyone has counted. Her engineers are good. What wears them down is the space between systems: discovery that disagrees with the CMDB, the license spreadsheet, the cloud bill nobody can explain, and the runbook that lives in a former colleague's head. This is one ordinary week.

  1. Monday, 07:40

    The handover spreadsheet that was already wrong

    Kestrel Bay takes over Larkspur Freight's estate today. The previous provider's handover sheet lists 212 servers and two cloud accounts. By mid-morning the team has found a third account paying for a forgotten analytics cluster, and a database server the CMDB marks Operational that was switched off in the spring. Nobody can say which applications depend on the storage array due for replacement next month.

    How this is solved: A CMDB and inventory that match what is actually running

  2. Monday, 14:10

    An audit letter and fourteen unknown card charges

    Fernhall Legal forwards a letter from its productivity-suite vendor asking for a license count within thirty days. The same afternoon its finance lead sends an expense export with fourteen recurring SaaS charges IT has never seen. One of them is a file-sharing tool holding client documents, and three people who left in July still hold paid seats in it.

    How this is solved: Licenses, renewals and shadow IT with one owner each

  3. Tuesday, 09:05

    The cloud bill nobody can explain

    Calloway Dental Group's finance director emails a screenshot: the August cloud invoice is well above July's. A large share of the spend carries no cost-center tag, shared networking is split by a formula nobody remembers, and the question on the call is simple and awkward: which team caused this, and was it the MSP's change?

    How this is solved: Cloud spend attributed to the teams and clients who drive it

  4. Wednesday, 21:30

    Patch night across 300 servers

    A critical advisory for a widely used Linux library landed on Tuesday, and every client wants it closed before the weekend. The team has a change window from 22:00 to 02:00 for about 300 Linux servers across nine clients, each of which approves its own change. The plan is a spreadsheet, approvals sit in nine email threads, and the second wave stalls when a server rejects the patch because someone hand-edited its configuration last month.

    How this is solved: Patch windows that follow an approved plan, wave by wave

  5. Thursday, 03:12

    The page nobody wants

    Larkspur's order API starts timing out. The on-call engineer, Tomasz, is in his second week and has never worked on this estate. The runbook exists somewhere in a shared drive. He needs to know what sits behind the API, whether last night's patch touched it, and how to get a senior engineer onto the same terminal without passing credentials around in chat.

    How this is solved: On-call that starts with the runbook and the dependency map

  6. Friday, 16:00

    A quarterly review by Monday morning

    Quillon Parts, a client for six years, has its quarterly business review on Monday. Nadia needs hours used against the support block, SLA performance, incidents and changes, cloud spend against budget, and the warranties and support contracts expiring next quarter. In past quarters an account manager spent a day stitching five exports into slides, and the client still asked where the numbers came from.

    How this is solved: Client service reviews built from the record, not the night before

None of this is exotic. It is the normal texture of running infrastructure for other people. The idea behind the solution is that each of these moments starts from the same governed picture of the estate, and each product hands the next one something concrete instead of another spreadsheet.

Challenges and how they are solved

6 problems, several products, one connected answer

Each challenge shows the problem as it happens, how the products are designed to hand work to each other, and the concepts that illustrate it. Share any challenge on its own.

Challenge 1 of 6

A CMDB and inventory that match what is actually running

AdapterCloud(opens AdapterCloud in a new tab)AssetHandler(opens AssetHandler in a new tab)FluidGrids(opens FluidGrids in a new tab)

The problem

An MSP onboards a new client, or an infrastructure team inherits an acquisition. The handover documentation is a spreadsheet from the previous provider, and discovery soon turns up cloud accounts nobody listed and servers the CMDB still shows as live long after they were switched off. Configuration items have no owners, dependencies were never recorded, and nobody can say what relies on the storage or network gear due for replacement. Every change, incident and audit that follows inherits the uncertainty.

What it costs

Changes are approved against a CMDB that is wrong, incidents start with guesswork about dependencies, and orphaned resources keep billing for months.

How the products work together

AdapterCloud is designed to connect to each cloud account, cluster and on-prem target and keep a unified resource inventory and dependency topology current through discovery and reconcile runs. AssetHandler's own network discovery jobs cover on-prem subnets, so both sources feed the same queue. AssetHandler stays the system of record for configuration items, owners, hardware lifecycle and change history. The two are designed to meet in a reconciliation queue: each discovered resource is matched against a configuration item, and each mismatch becomes a decision to create, retire or merge a CI, or to assign an owner, with AdapterCloud's topology showing what still depends on it. FluidGrids can route unowned items to the owning team as tasks and re-run the check on a schedule.

The outcome it is designed for

Designed to give every change, incident and audit a CMDB that reflects the running estate, with each correction attributed to a named person.

The concepts behind it

Challenge 2 of 6

Licenses, renewals and shadow IT with one owner each

Subscriber Bot(opens Subscriber Bot in a new tab)AssetHandler(opens AssetHandler in a new tab)FluidGrids(opens FluidGrids in a new tab)

The problem

Vendor audit letters arrive with short deadlines, finance keeps finding recurring SaaS charges IT never approved, and leavers keep paid seats, and sometimes access to sensitive files, until someone notices at renewal. The effective license position is rebuilt by hand for every audit, nobody owns the tools teams bought on corporate cards, and notice periods pass unseen, so unwanted renewals lock in for another year.

What it costs

Over- and under-licensing both cost money, unsanctioned tools hold sensitive data outside IT's controls, and leavers keep access and seats long after they exit.

How the products work together

Subscriber Bot is designed to be the system of record for recurring relationships: it brings SaaS subscriptions, renewal dates, notice periods, payment instruments and invoices into one portfolio, and is designed to surface unrecognized recurring spend as shadow-IT candidates for review. AssetHandler holds the installed-software and entitlement side, comparing seats purchased with seats used to produce a license position for the true-up. When a reviewer sanctions a tool in Subscriber Bot, it is designed to be registered in AssetHandler's software register with an owner and an entitlement count. When someone leaves, FluidGrids can run the offboarding workflow that removes access and hands the freed seats back to Subscriber Bot for a downgrade or cancellation before the notice period closes.

The outcome it is designed for

Designed to give IT one owner for every paid tool, a license position ready before the vendor asks, and seats reclaimed within days of a leaver's exit.

The concepts behind it

Challenge 3 of 6

Cloud spend attributed to the teams and clients who drive it

AdapterCloud(opens AdapterCloud in a new tab)FluidGrids(opens FluidGrids in a new tab)BigConsole(opens BigConsole in a new tab)

The problem

The month closes and a budget holder, or an MSP client's finance director, asks why the cloud invoice jumped. A large share of spend carries no cost-center tag, shared networking and platform costs are split by a formula nobody remembers, and last quarter's rightsizing list was never actioned because no one owned the resources on it. The FinOps analyst exports billing data into a spreadsheet to answer the only question that matters: which team drove this, and was it a change someone made on purpose?

What it costs

Budget holders dispute allocations they cannot trace, untagged spend keeps growing, and savings conversations stall because nobody owns the resource.

How the products work together

AdapterCloud ingests cost records against the same resources it discovers, so spend sits on the topology rather than on a service line, and a tagging policy is designed to flag resources missing a cost-center tag as violations with owners. Its showback view is designed to allocate spend to cost centers or clients by tag, split shared costs by a stated rule and keep unallocated spend visible as its own line. A FluidGrids workflow then pushes the published allocation into BigConsole data sinks on a schedule, where each budget holder is designed to see only their own slice and ask what changed, with the answer citing the resource and period behind it.

The outcome it is designed for

Designed so every budget holder sees spend they can trace to a resource, and untagged spend becomes a shrinking queue rather than a monthly argument.

The concepts behind it

Challenge 4 of 6

Patch windows that follow an approved plan, wave by wave

VibeControls(opens VibeControls in a new tab)AssetHandler(opens AssetHandler in a new tab)AdapterCloud(opens AdapterCloud in a new tab)FluidGrids(opens FluidGrids in a new tab)

The problem

A critical advisory lands and every client or business unit wants it closed within days. The change window is a few hours overnight, the scope is hundreds of servers, the plan lives in a spreadsheet and approvals sit in separate email threads. Servers that were hand-edited months ago reject the patch mid-wave, and by the early hours nobody is sure which servers are done, which rebooted and which need rolling back, so the change record says one thing and the estate another.

What it costs

Windows overrun, change records stop matching what was actually done, and configuration drift turns routine patching into an outage risk.

How the products work together

AssetHandler holds one change request per client: scope as configuration items, risk, window and each reviewer's approval. Before the window opens, AdapterCloud's drift records show which servers have diverged from their desired configuration, so they are fixed or excluded first. VibeControls is designed to run the approved changes as ordered waves on servers where its agent is installed, pilot first and then broad, using pre-approved Vibe Deck actions and Vibe Calendar scheduled tasks, pausing the next wave when failures pass a threshold and logging every command. Wave results are designed to be written back to each AssetHandler change request, and FluidGrids can raise follow-up tasks for servers that were skipped or rolled back.

The outcome it is designed for

Designed so a patch night ends with change records that match reality: which servers were patched, skipped or rolled back, by whom and when.

The concepts behind it

VibeControls

Patch Window Rollout Waves

Runs the approved changes as pilot and broad waves across agents, with per-server status, a failure threshold that pauses the next wave and a link to each client's change record.

Works with AssetHandler, AdapterCloud

Concept pagefor Patch Window Rollout Waves on the VibeControls website (opens in a new tab)

Challenge 5 of 6

On-call that starts with the runbook and the dependency map

Botlit(opens Botlit in a new tab)AdapterCloud(opens AdapterCloud in a new tab)VibeControls(opens VibeControls in a new tab)AssetHandler(opens AssetHandler in a new tab)FluidGrids(opens FluidGrids in a new tab)

The problem

In the middle of the night a customer-facing service starts failing, and the engineer on call is new to that estate. The runbook is somewhere in a shared drive, monitoring shows the symptom but not the dependencies, and nobody can say quickly whether last night's change touched the database behind it. Pulling in a senior engineer means sharing a screen over a call or passing credentials around in chat, and the fix rarely makes it back into the runbook for the next person.

What it costs

Engaging the right person takes too long, newer engineers escalate by default, and credential sharing mid-incident leaves no clean audit trail.

How the products work together

Botlit is designed to run an on-call assistant in the team's chat channel, grounded in the runbooks and known-error articles AssetHandler keeps in Botlit knowledge bases, answering with the passages it used and saying plainly when nothing matches. AdapterCloud's topology shows what sits behind the failing service and which of those resources changed or drifted recently. When the engineer needs help, VibeControls shares the live terminal session with a senior colleague through an expiring link with a clear viewer or interactive role, so nobody hands over passwords. Botlit can trigger a FluidGrids workflow that opens the incident record in AssetHandler, and the eventual fix goes back into the runbook.

The outcome it is designed for

Designed to put a newer engineer in front of the right runbook, the right dependencies and the right colleague within minutes, with every step on the audit trail.

The concepts behind it

Challenge 6 of 6

Client service reviews built from the record, not the night before

BigConsole(opens BigConsole in a new tab)TimeCampus(opens TimeCampus in a new tab)AssetHandler(opens AssetHandler in a new tab)AdapterCloud(opens AdapterCloud in a new tab)FluidGrids(opens FluidGrids in a new tab)

The problem

Every quarter each client expects a business review: hours used against the support agreement, SLA performance, incidents and changes, cloud spend against budget, and the hardware and contracts reaching end of life. Each figure lives in a different tool, so account managers lose a day per client stitching exports into slides, and clients still ask where the numbers came from and how their data is kept apart from other clients'.

What it costs

Review prep eats senior time, figures are challenged because they cannot be traced, and scope creep on fixed-fee contracts goes unnoticed until renewal.

How the products work together

TimeCampus captures engineers' time against client projects with an hour budget, for example a 400-hour support block set up as a project budget, with consent and without surveillance. AdapterCloud provides the client's cloud spend and open policy violations, and AssetHandler provides incidents and changes with their SLA results, plus the warranties and support contracts expiring next quarter. FluidGrids workflows are designed to pull each of these into BigConsole data sinks, where one review console template is stamped out per client and is designed so each console reads only that client's rows. The account manager shares a read-only link or exports the pack, and every figure names the product it came from.

The outcome it is designed for

Designed to turn review prep from a day of exports into a check of one console per client, with figures the client can trace to their source.

The concepts behind it

How it fits together

How it fits together: from discovered resource to client review

Discovery feeds the record, the record gates change, change and response feed the numbers, and the numbers go back to the people who own them. Each step is one product doing one job and handing the next a concrete item.

  1. To AssetHandler: Resources with no matching configuration item are designed to go to the CMDB reconciliation queue.

  2. To AssetHandler: Sanctioned tools are designed to be registered as software assets with an owner and an entitlement count.

  3. To VibeControls: An approved change request is designed to become a wave plan.

  4. To AssetHandler: Wave results are designed to be written back to the change record; skipped servers and rollbacks go to FluidGrids for follow-up tasks.

  5. To FluidGrids: A request to open an incident record in AssetHandler and notify the owning team.

  6. To FluidGrids: Monthly hours per client project, designed to feed the reporting workflow.

  7. To BigConsole: Governed data sinks for cost allocation, service performance and client hours.

Step 1 of 8: Discover and cost the estate

Products in this solution

What each product brings

  • AdapterCloud

    Estate inventory, topology, drift and cloud cost

    Is designed to connect cloud accounts, clusters, on-prem and SaaS targets into one inventory and dependency graph, with policies, drift records and cost records attached to the same resources. It is the live picture the other products work from.

    Visit AdapterCloudAll concepts

  • AssetHandler

    CMDB, change records and software licenses

    The system of record for configuration items, hardware lifecycle, incidents, problems, changes and software entitlements, with network discovery jobs for on-prem subnets. It holds the ownership and history that cloud discovery alone cannot supply.

    Visit AssetHandlerAll concepts

  • Subscriber Bot

    SaaS portfolio, renewals and shadow IT

    Treats every subscription, license and contract as a relationship with a plan, renewal date, notice period and invoices, and is designed to surface recurring spend that IT did not know about.

    Visit Subscriber BotAll concepts

  • VibeControls

    Fleet operations, runbooks and shared sessions

    Agents installed on servers run pre-approved Vibe Deck actions and Vibe Calendar jobs, Plan mode puts AI-proposed work behind a human review, and terminal sessions can be shared through expiring links, all under one audit log.

    Visit VibeControlsAll concepts

  • FluidGrids

    Workflows and data feeds between products

    Visual workflows route mismatches, offboarding steps and follow-up tasks between products, and data sink nodes push allocations, tickets and hours into BigConsole on a schedule.

    Visit FluidGridsAll concepts

  • Botlit

    On-call and service desk assistant

    Governed agents in the team's chat channels are designed to answer from runbooks and known errors with cited passages, and can trigger workflows such as opening an incident record.

    Visit BotlitAll concepts

  • BigConsole

    Showback and client review consoles

    Console templates are stamped out per budget holder or per client, fed by governed data sinks, with sharing controls and row separation designed so each viewer sees only their own slice.

    Visit BigConsoleAll concepts

  • TimeCampus

    Time against client projects

    Captures engineers' time against client projects with an hour budget, with consent and without surveillance, keeps team load visible only in aggregate, and gives each client a share link to their hours.

    Visit TimeCampusAll concepts

One platform underneath: Burdenoff Workspaces

All eight products run on Burdenoff Workspaces: one sign-on, role-based access, one audit trail and one bill. Each client estate lives in its own workspace, so access and audit stay separate, while the MSP's operations workspace is designed to give engineers a cross-client view of assigned work.

Concept gallery

Every concept in this solution

15 concepts from 8 products. Each one links to its own page on the product's website, and every view has a link you can share.

Pitch kit

The IT & Cloud solution in one minute

Infrastructure teams and MSPs lose their week in the gaps between tools: discovery that disagrees with the CMDB, licenses in spreadsheets, cloud bills nobody can explain, patch plans in email and runbooks nobody can find at 3 a.m. Burdenoff brings eight products together on one governed picture of the estate, so each of those moments starts from the same record and hands the next team something concrete.

  • AdapterCloud discovery reconciled against the AssetHandler CMDB, so changes are approved against what is actually running
  • Subscriber Bot and AssetHandler together for renewals, shadow IT and a license position ready before the true-up
  • Cloud spend designed to be allocated by tag in AdapterCloud and published to each budget holder through FluidGrids and BigConsole
  • VibeControls patch waves tied to per-client AssetHandler change approvals, with Botlit runbook answers for on-call
  • Per-client review consoles with TimeCampus hours, AssetHandler SLAs, cloud spend and lifecycle, each figure traceable
Email it

Questions

Frequently asked

Does this replace our monitoring, RMM or ticketing tools?

Not necessarily. The solution is designed to sit alongside the tools you already run. AdapterCloud models other systems through adapters, and FluidGrids workflows can move data between Burdenoff products and external systems through connectors, webhooks and an API. Many teams would start with one gap, such as CMDB reconciliation or SaaS renewals, and extend from there.

How are client estates kept apart for an MSP?

Each client estate lives in its own workspace, so access and audit stay separate. Every Burdenoff product is workspace-scoped, with role-based access on every operation and one audit trail. The MSP's own operations workspace is designed to give engineers a cross-client view of work they are assigned to, such as a patch night, and the BigConsole review template is designed to be stamped out per client so each console reads only that client's rows.

Is all of this available today?

The products are pre-launch or early, and this page describes a solution concept. Several surfaces shown here, including the CMDB reconciliation queue, cloud showback, patch waves and the client review console, are proposed designs. The integrations the products document are FluidGrids data sinks feeding BigConsole and Botlit agents querying dashboards and triggering workflows, and those are still being completed; the other hand-offs describe how the products are designed to work together.

Will the AI act on our infrastructure on its own?

The design keeps people in charge of consequential actions. Botlit is designed to answer with cited sources and say when nothing matches; VibeControls can require a human-approved plan before AI-proposed commands run; Subscriber Bot agents are designed to propose renewals and cancellations for a person to approve. Every action runs under a named identity and lands in the audit trail.

Does TimeCampus monitor our engineers?

No. TimeCampus is built to be privacy-first: it captures work context with consent rather than surveillance, and team views are aggregate. For an MSP the useful output is hours against client projects and a team-level view of load, not a record of what each person does minute by minute.

Where would a team usually start?

Wherever the pain is sharpest. Teams with an untrusted CMDB often start with AdapterCloud discovery reconciled against AssetHandler. Teams facing a vendor audit or a heavy renewal season start with Subscriber Bot and AssetHandler licenses. MSPs often start with client review consoles, which grow richer as each other product is connected.

Related domains

Where these products also work together

All domains

Want to explore this for your organization?

Tell us about your setup. We will walk you through the products involved and scope a pilot around the challenge that hurts most.

Talk to usBrowse every domain

This is a solution concept: it shows how Burdenoff products are designed to work together in this industry. The images are illustrations of the concepts, not screenshots of the actual products, and every name and figure in them is sample data.