The flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness offered by the cloud have made it indispensable for companies across industries. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that many organizations are failing to maximize these benefits because their cloud framework is lacking on some level. Maybe their environments aren’t fully optimized, or maybe their security isn’t as strong as it should be — whatever the cause, their investment in the cloud is limiting performance.
This has very real consequences, especially when it comes to growth.
In a study of 1.4 million AWS accounts conducted by Amazon, the accounts that had invested in a well-architected framework — that is, partnered with an expert for a full assessment of their current cloud framework — were able to achieve 10x the growth compared to those that had not.
The Pillars of a Well-Architected Framework
As conceived by AWS, the well-architected framework is a collection of design principles, concepts, and best practices for cloud environments.
The framework is built upon six pillars:
Operations
Continually improving the processes and procedures by automating changes, responding to events, and keeping standards intact.
Security
Protecting information and systems via confidentiality and integrity of data, managing user permissions, and implementing control to monitor security events.
Cost Optimization
Avoiding unnecessary costs by understanding spending over time, controlling fund allocation, and choosing the right resources to scale without overspending.
Reliability
Ensuring workloads perform as intended and recover quickly from failures via distributed system design, recovery planning, and adaptation.
Efficiency
Streamlining allocation of IT and computing resources by selecting resource types and sizes that are optimized for workloads, monitoring performance, and maintaining efficiencies.
Sustainability
Minimizing the environmental impact by maximizing utilization to minimize the use of resources and effects downstream.
Partnering for a Well-Architected Framework Assessment
While ensuring each of these pillars is checked off in your cloud strategy can be done internally, there are very real benefits for organizations of all sizes in working with a trusted partner.
These benefits include:
- The ability to offset resources and expertise gaps
- Establishing alignment and governance throughout your cloud environments
- Expert guidance on accelerating the pace of innovation, cutting costs, and resolving risks
- Offsetting the costs of removing high-risk issues
At Redapt, our well-architected framework assessment solution is done in collaboration with our partners at CoreStack and is designed to help organizations create integrated and continuous governance across their Ops.
What does this mean?
For FinOps, it makes it easier for organizations to build a culture of cost accountability, obtain a unified organization-wide view of cloud spend, and identify underutilized, orphaned, and idle resources.
For SecOps, can obtain a comprehensive security posture, build a proactive approach to cloud security and compliance assurance, and overcome multi-cloud compliance challenges.
And, as for CloudOps, they can automate and streamline cloud operations, simplify the use of tools, integrations, and multiple services, and gain holistic cloud utilization insights.
A path to Thriving in the Cloud
Companies that can effectively leverage the cloud stand to gain significant advantages in terms of performance, security, reliability, cost-efficiency, and agility.
By utilizing a well-architected framework assessment, it’s much easier — and cost-effective — to maximize the value of your cloud investment.
The last thing growing companies need is for their cloud environments to slow them down, whether it’s through inefficient resource management or security risks that lead to expensive delays.
Ready to get the most out of your cloud environments? Schedule a clarity call with one of our experts today.
