InfrastructureDisaster RecoveryAI
Infrastructure that holds.
Recovery that works.
AI that ships.
Three services, each available on its own. Twenty years rescuing production systems, building the platforms under them, and putting AI into production on top. Bring us one problem or all of them.
Who you work with
One senior engineer who has been in the room when it broke.
Twenty-five years in production at IBM, E*TRADE and Pitney Bowes: enterprise systems at scale, infrastructure serving millions of users, integrations that could not fail. When you call Watkins Labs you talk to me, and I do the work.
- IBMInfrastructure & automation
- E*TRADEEnterprise systems
- Pitney BowesPlatform engineering
- Watkins LabsFounder, since 2010
Built by us
We build and run
platforms like these.
The consulting is backed by products we design, ship, and operate ourselves under WatkinsX, the Watkins Labs product family: a kernel, a video platform, a motion engine, an ML platform, a Git forge. The same engineering we bring to your systems.
What we do
Three services.
None of them depends on the others.
Platforms that run without babysitting.
Cloud and on-prem, Kubernetes, CI/CD, observability, infrastructure as code, security hardening, migrations and legacy modernization.
Infrastructure →
Recovery you have already tested.
DR & continuity planning → You talk to Chris. No sales team, no juniors. Systems rescue Something failing right now?
Triage, root cause, fixes in order of risk, and a system that stays up.
How a rescue runs →
AI that ships to production.
Governed data, MCP servers, agents and evaluations. Or one targeted bottleneck.
The AI Journey →Senior engineering behind your brand.
Managed service providers bring us in, white-label, for the platform builds, migrations, rescues, DR and AI projects their clients need. Your client, your name, a clean handoff to your team.
Partner with us →How we build
Everything written down, monitored, and recoverable.
We build on what you already run. Every platform we touch ends up reproducible from a repository, watched by alerts people trust, backed up to copies an attacker cannot reach, and handed back with runbooks.
- Reproducible. Infrastructure as code, reviewed like code.
- Observable. Metrics, logs, and traces that point at the problem.
- Recoverable. Immutable backups and a rehearsed failover.
- Handed back. Your team owns it when we leave.
Understand it before you touch it.
Break nothing that works.
AI · The Foundation Method™
Four phases.
Each one feeds the next.
For AI engagements: most AI projects fail on data nobody trusts and infrastructure nobody can reproduce. We map what you have, define what it means, build the systems, then put governed intelligence on top. Or start with the free 5-minute AI Readiness Assessment.
How an engagement runs
From first call to a system
your team can run.
- 01
Call
Tell us what is broken or what you need built. No deck, no discovery theater.
- 02
Assess
We look at the real system: code, infrastructure, data, runbooks, people.
- 03
Fix or build
In order of risk and impact. Every change reversible and verified.
- 04
Hand back
Documentation, runbooks, and a team that can run what we built.
- 05
Stay available
Retainers for the systems that need ongoing attention.
How we work together
Choose your run.
Durations are fixed. Phases inside are dynamic. We triage based on your systems, your people, and the complexity of what is actually broken.
Assessment
5 minutes · Instant
$0
Twenty questions. Scored across all four phases. Tells you where you stand before anyone talks money.
- Self-serve, no call
- Written result
- Per-phase score
One-Month Run
1 month · Fixed scope
from $45k
Triage and stabilize the most critical issue. Ship a targeted fix and a roadmap for what comes next.
- Rapid intervention
- One critical problem, solved
- Next-step roadmap
Three-Month Run
3 months · Fixed scope
from $250k
Foundation work. Phases worked in parallel where possible. Production-ready systems on the layers that needed them.
- Multiple phases in parallel
- Semantic model and pipelines
- Production infrastructure
Six-Month Run
6 months · All phases
Custom quote
End-to-end. All four phases, dynamically sequenced. From audit to AI in production. Retainer available after launch.
- Audit through Intelligence
- Decision platform deployment
- Evaluations and AI Ops
AI usage is a real cost of this work. Depending on engagement scope, 25–50% of the total goes directly toward AI API usage — model inference, embeddings, discovery agents, and evaluation runs. A single discovery session on a large codebase can run $2,000–$5,000 in API costs alone. That cost is built into the price, not billed separately. You are paying for production outcomes, not hours.
Emergency recovery
Systems down right now?
Failed storage, a botched migration, a deleted database, ransomware, a platform that will not come back up. Call us. We triage, recover in order of business priority, and make sure it does not happen the same way twice.
Common questions
Answers to what
everyone asks first.
What is the AI Readiness Assessment?
Free, 20 questions, 5 minutes. Scored across all four phases. Written result instantly. No sales call.
How long does a typical engagement take?
One, three, or six months. Durations are fixed. Phases inside are dynamic — we triage based on systems, people, and complexity.
Do you work with existing engineering teams?
Yes. We build end-to-end or work alongside your team as architects and reviewers. Same methodology either way.
Do you take infrastructure work that has nothing to do with AI?
Yes. Systems rescue, platform engineering, migrations, Kubernetes, CI/CD, observability, and security hardening are a large part of what we do. See infrastructure & platform.
Do you work with MSPs?
Yes. We work white-label behind managed service providers on projects and escalations their teams do not cover, under the partner's brand and client relationship.
What industries do you serve?
Financial services, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, enterprise operations. Anywhere compliance and reliability matter.
Do you offer training?
Included in every engagement. We do not sell standalone courses. The deliverable is a working system.
What does this cost?
Assessment is free. One-Month Runs from $45k. Three-Month Runs from $250k. Six-Month Runs quoted per scope.
Why foundation-first?
Every AI project that fails fails for the same reason. The model is not the problem. The foundation under it is.
Not sure where you stand?
Tell us what is broken and we will tell you honestly what it takes. Or, if you are starting with AI, take the free AI Readiness Assessment: twenty questions, five minutes, scored across infrastructure and team, automation and deployment, data and pipelines, and AI and security.
Building Stage
You have a foundation. Now you need structure.
- Infrastructure & Team72
- Automation & Deployment49
- Data & Pipelines61
- AI & Security38