Today, we’re excited to announce that Welford Systems has been accepted into the Microsoft for Startups program. This milestone gives our team direct access to Microsoft’s cloud ecosystem, engineering guidance, and marketplace routes—helping us scale Welford IAG faster and deliver more value to our customers.

About Microsoft for Startups

Microsoft for Startups is a growth program designed to help early and scaling companies build, ship, and sell on Azure. Startups get access to cloud credits, developer tools, mentorship, and go-to-market pathways—so teams can focus on product differentiation rather than undifferentiated heavy lifting.

Azure infrastructure credits and technical enablement.
Developer tooling and productivity offers.
Architecture reviews and expert guidance.
Marketplace publishing and sales motion support.

What Welford Will Leverage

As an identity-first security company, we’ll focus our benefits on strengthening Welford IAG’s architecture, speed to market, and customer trust:

Secure, scalable Azure landing zones for dev/test/prod.
Deep integration with Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD).
Automation via GitHub Actions, Bicep/Terraform, and Defender for Cloud guardrails.
Marketplace listing to streamline procurement and billing.
Co-marketing and technical validation with Microsoft experts.

Step-by-Step Plan (First 12 Weeks)

Program Onboarding: Complete environment setup, tenant alignment, and security baselines (CIS, Defender for Cloud).
Landing Zone & Networking: Deploy reference landing zones with hub/spoke, Private Link, Key Vault, managed identities, and cost guardrails.
Identity & Access: Integrate Entra ID for SSO, SCIM, and MFA; align with Welford IAG’s JIT access principles.
Data & Secrets: Centralize secrets in Key Vault; enable encryption at rest/in transit; audit via logs/metrics.
CI/CD: GitHub Actions pipelines with IaC (Bicep/Terraform) and environment approvals; containerized builds.
Observability: Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and alerts for SLIs/SLOs; cost monitors and budget alerts.
Security Validation: Threat modeling, Defender for Cloud posture checks, vulnerability scans for images and dependencies.
Compliance Enablement: Map controls to ISO 27001/27017/27018; document evidence for audits and customer reviews.
Marketplace Readiness: Prepare offer, pricing, and private plans; validate transactable path.
Co-Sell Enablement: Create solution briefs and references; align with partner team for opportunity sharing.
Pilot Customers: Run controlled onboarding with early adopters; capture feedback and iterate.
Public Launch Prep: Finalize marketing assets, documentation, and SLAs for general availability.

Technical Roadmap on Azure (High Level)

Identity: Entra ID for org SSO, role-based access, Conditional Access; JIT elevation aligned with Welford IAG.
Security: Defender for Cloud, Microsoft Sentinel (optional) for detections; centralized logging and alerting.
Data: Managed services with encryption, private endpoints, and backup policies; secrets in Key Vault.
Automation: GitHub Actions + IaC for repeatable deployments; environment promotion gates.

Marketplace & Go-to-Market

Listing on the Microsoft commercial marketplace reduces procurement friction and enables flexible pricing and private offers. We’ll align our offer to match common buying patterns and collaborate with Microsoft partner teams on co-sell motions.

What This Means for Our Customers

Faster roadmap execution and higher reliability through proven Azure patterns.
Stronger security posture, continuous verification, and audit-ready evidence.
Simpler procurement via marketplace and enterprise agreements.

Follow Our Journey

We’ll share progress updates as we complete each step—technical milestones, customer stories, and marketplace updates. If you’d like early access or a private demo of Welford IAG on Azure, we’d love to talk.

— Welford Systems, advancing Identity Governance for a Zero Trust world.