AWS Infrastructure, how to take it to the next level
The webinar is about how to take your AWS infrastructure to the next level from our experts.
ZoomTalk hosted by Adolfo Manaure, Editorial Director of The Standard CIO on how using the Well-Artchitected Framework can dramatically improve your AWS infrastructure.
In collaboration with The Standard CIO, we organized an in-depth interview with our CTO, Sebastian Grattarola, and our CBO, Pablo Innella. The dynamic conversation was introduced by Adolfo Manaure, Editorial Director of The Hispanic Publishing Group.
The webinar is about how to take your AWS infrastructure to the next level from our experts.
The appointment was on Thursday, July 13, 2023 at 11:00 hrs. in Lima and at 13:00 hrs. in Montevideo.
If you’ve faced challenges managing your infrastructure on Amazon Web Services (AWS), such as a sudden spike in AWS consumption and billing, security threats to your infrastructure, discovering system failures too late, or if you simply want to take your infrastructure on AWS to the next level, this webinar is for you.
More than 50 AWS infrastructures…
With more than 50 programs executed, we will tell you what this approach consists of and how we have successfully implemented it in various sectors, optimizing costs and solving complex threats.
Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how your company can benefit from the AWS Well-Architected Review program.
Summary:
Adolfo Manaure: What are the main challenges of a migration to the cloud?
Pablo Innella: A recent Accenture study indicates that 86% of companies have increased the scope of their cloud technology initiatives.
However, only 42% assume to have achieved the objectives set at the time of starting the migration path to the cloud.
At the same time, only four out of 10 companies have managed to optimize their IT costs after investing in the cloud.
Bringing these numbers down to earth and to concretely answer your question the challenges are:
- to meet technical expectations,
- accommodate business demand
- and optimize costs.
Adolfo Manaure: What have been the main pains?
Sebastián Grattarola: In recent years we have mainly identified two problems, or rather, two types of problems.
- Underutilization of the cloud’s potential.
- Loss of security and cost control.
The first is an underutilization of the cloud. This means that I am using the cloud, but I am still having some problems that I had when I was on-prem.
Now I’m in the cloud and I’m a bit more flexible, I’m faster than before, but I still don’t have my architecture optimized. I feel I could get more out of it, and I’m still doing a lot of things “ad hoc”, scaling manually, solving recurring problems when they come and often without anticipating them.
They would like to take their AWS infrastructure to the next level but you have no experience within your team.
This happens many times because when I “went to the cloud from on prem”, I had to do it doing lift&shift, which is basically to take the virtual machines or servers that I had in my local datacenter, I took them as they were to the cloud. I didn’t have the time or the knowledge to give it another turn of the screw, so sometimes I had the same problems of performance, security, costs, because I wasn’t yet in the cloud native mindset.
Warning, the lift&shift is a very valid migration strategy, I am not saying it is wrong, on the contrary, it is a very good strategy to migrate quickly. The problem occurs when we stay there. After L/S we need to get our heads on straight and start modernizing what we can, to lower the operational cost of having what we had before and take it to something “cloud native”. It is necessary to give it continuity.
I can’t stand still because I’m going to have a big security problem, or a crash that will cause me to lose customers, etc.
The other problem we see is organizations that are growing in their use of the cloud, and feel they are “losing control”.
It could be because they had a security incident, or they are running up the AWS bill and don’t see or understand how to control it (we know it takes a while to understand how the pay-per-use, per-hour, per-byte, per-request pricing model works). On the other hand, each team within the organization that goes to the cloud has a different use for it, with different needs and knowledge, and it is difficult to keep track of everything new that the organization is creating.
This is where the term governance begins to appear, where we can implement and rely on tools and best practices already proven in millions of companies.
The value chain, the journey that starts from the legacy, going through a migration, and moving from level to level in the cost vs. innovation relationship. WAR is a tool to know the current state of the architecture and propose a way forward on both curves to the next level.
A.M.: What is formally AWS Well-Architected Review and how can companies take advantage of its best practices to move to the next level?
S.G.: Well-Architected is a high-level, best-practice guide that allows you to build and maintain secure, reliable, cost-optimized, cost-effective and operationally excellent applications on the AWS cloud.
This serves to “measure” where you stand as an organization, taking as a reference the 6 pillars proposed by the framework:
- Analyze security to prevent vulnerabilities or attacks
- Optimizing costs by seeking to get the most out of my investment
- Improve the availability of my platform
- Measuring and improving performance
- And define processes and metrics that pursue operational excellence, increasing the speed of innovation and time to market.
- Sustainability is also included as the 6th pillar, to measure and reduce the carbon footprint of our infra.
It is important to clarify that the Well-Architected and in particular the review process IS NOT AN AUDIT. Rather, it is a best practice guide, and more importantly, it is a process that includes remediation.
A.M.: What indicators of improvement can AWS customers who use AWS Well-Architected best practices aspire to? Based on the more than 50 implementations you have in the region and thinking about the most important industries, what statistics can you share?
S.G.: We deal with HRIs, the highest risk indicators. We prioritize improvements accordingly.
- In 100% of the workloads we analyzed in the last year we found some HRI related to safety, and in 100% of those cases a mechanism was implemented to remedy that HRI within the scope of the review.
- In 10 out of 11 projects (91%), work was done on an existing CORE concern of the customer, be it performance, security, availability, costs, etc. In other words, we did not work on what “we came up with”, but rather we reviewed best practices in general, but at the same time we focused on a core concern that the client had already had before. Whatever generates value to the business.
- On average, 65% of the HRIs encountered are resolved within the review project itself. It is not an audit, but an improvement implementation project.
- On average I find cost optimizations between 20-30% of the monthly bill. This is the most tangible ROI I get immediately after the review. And these bill savings include the new services added to mitigate threats.
A.M.: What should companies using AWS need in a technology partner to take advantage of the AWS Well-Architected methodology and optimize their IT infrastructure?
S.G.: Here I would separate the experience in the technical part with the focus on the business. In our Manifesto we mention that we put business before technology.
In terms of certifications, we have DevOps, WAF with more than 50 programs executed, Financial (only 4 in LATAM have it), Windows migrations, and many others that you can check on the web. 100% of our staff is certified.
The other factor we mentioned is our obsession with the customer, not losing focus on the business.
They can address factors such as DevOps in the DNA of the technology partner, the level of AWS certifications, or the agile approach to projects, or any other basic promise.
In short, the WAF is useful to know at what level is your cloud usage, to turn off the risks in order to be able to think calmly about how to move forward.
P.I.: We invite you to a 30 minute call to see if your company applies to the program, there are strong benefits because AWS does not want your account to be hacked, or your bill to skyrocket, or for you to lose control, they want you to learn how to take full advantage of the cloud and have a partner solve 50% of your biggest risks so you can focus on your business and beat your competition.
More info: Good infrastructure practices in AWS. Introducing the AWS Well-Architected Framework (WAF).
