Growth. It’s every startup’s dream. But managing an IT environment to support that growth, and scaling effectively and efficiently, can be quite challenging.
That’s what the recent AllCloud Meetup “Excelling Modern Cloud Operations” at AWS Floor28 in Tel Aviv was all about: how startups can leverage managed services for their AWS cloud operations to grow fast and scale faster, all in the right way.
You know what they say: you’re only as good as your best DevOps, but for growing startups, it’s not good enough. With an AWS Managed Services Provider (MSP), startups can access a ready-to-go CloudOps team, skilled in the very latest AWS tools, features and best practices, so they won’t be dragged behind by the time taken to hire and train an in-house team.
Let’s drill down and explore 4 ways that utilizing an AWS MSP Partner can help startups modernize, scale, mature and excel in their security, DevOps, health monitoring and cloud costs:
Keeping the Chaos Under Control
Smart cloud operations for startups is all about making order out of the chaos. The cloud environment of a growing startup is typically complex, with many different AWS services and evolving architecture to manage, monitor and optimize. As the startup signs on more and more customers, the production environment scales, and the developers’ focus shifts to managing infrastructure and cloud security instead of innovating. That’s precisely the right moment that the cloud experts should step in and get it all under control.
There are many factors to consider, all of which can make or break a startup in the growth stage: cloud costs can spiral out of control, and security is vital to ensure that the service provided to customers is never vulnerable or compromised. Not to mention that there are new AWS features and capabilities released every day. That’s where a dedicated MSP Partner and team of AWS experts can help channel all this chaos into efficient and smooth operations so that startups worry less and innovate more.
Becoming Blueprint Based
The potential of an AWS environment is almost infinite however, there is no need to waste time or money reinventing the wheel. That’s why it’s important to be blueprint based: start your AWS infrastructure with pre-built templates based on best practices, saving effort and precious resources. That’s what AllCloud Solutions Factory is all about – offering a collection of pre-baked deployment guidelines and tried-and-tested configurations so startups start with a solution that’s known to work.
AWS is a monolith of documentation and services, but if you go the blueprint path, then you don’t need to wade through it all. Using a blueprint-based deployment is a strategic decision to build the best foundation, allowing your AWS infrastructure to expand within without continuously reconfiguring and managing individual moving parts.
AllCloud’s latest solution – Open Blueprint Engine – allows organizations to build and distribute blueprints for any component of an organization’s infrastructure, enabling them to create their own ‘mini’ Solutions Factory within their organization. With the Open Blueprint Engine, startups can author, deploy and share best-practice blueprints with their own teams and create solution templates that are specific to their company’s needs, all while using a pre-built structure. Software development teams can then operate autonomously to ship code to production faster, while retaining required governance and transparency.
Based on our experience helping hundreds of AWS customers, this is hands down the most efficient and proven way of managing AWS at scale. Startup teams can focus their energies and expertise on what they know best: product development, acquiring new customers, and growing the business.
Remaining Agile and Secure
The goal of every startup is agility – the ability to adapt quickly to changing market conditions, product developments and increased customer demand. But let’s not forget the most important thing of all: security.
There’s no such thing as toggling a security service and considering it done. Security must be monitored and managed, constantly. It’s simply not enough to react to security issues one-off; startups must be proactive and think five steps ahead, so when scaling, their security infrastructure is ready too.
In order to be both agile and secure, startups can start with simple tips like creating separate AWS accounts for every workload and using AWS-native services like Security Hub to support centralized, multi-account monitoring and automated security responses. What’s the best way for startups to have their cloud environment in line with the minute-to-minute security situation, today and tomorrow? Start with a Landing Zone like the AllCloud Next Generation Landing Zone (NGLZ) which helps an organization of any size quickly set up the correct account structures, establish security baselines, and configure networks. The flexible framework uses Migration, DevOps, and Security best practices to help build a ready-to-scale, highly secure and compliant environment in just a few hours.
Also, leverage a partner who has the knowledge, skill and manpower capability available to deliver, based on the lovely best-practice and pre-configured blueprints we mentioned earlier.
Controlling Cloud Costs
Almost everything within a cloud environment is a resource and is going to cost you. The question is, how to get the most out of every dollar spent on AWS? It’s not just about managing costs; it’s about changing your approach to cloud costs: setting KPI-based goals and then tracking and optimizing the AWS activity to meet them.
Cost optimization is much more than just something you do; it must be a part of the DNA of a business. At AllCloud, when we talk about driving cloud cost efficiency, we mean looking at it from various angles and creating a holistic cost optimization culture. For example, examine the cloud costs per DevOps engineer, product, business unit, or task – is there a way to do things differently so that each individual can be more cost-conscious and extract more from their AWS activity?
Being optimized, from every vantage point, and making FinOps a part of the company’s cultural identity is an excellent way for an AWS MSP Partner to help startups excel in their modern AWS operations.
How to Engage
For growing startups and businesses who want to scale their AWS environment the right way, and do it securely, quickly and at optimal cost, AllCloud Engage provides a complete range of managed services and support that simplify AWS cloud operations.
Let go of the slow approach of hiring in-house, or building an AWS environment from scratch. Benefit from a cloud-ready team, experts in the latest AWS best practices and tools, forward-thinking cloud security, and a KPI-based cost-optimization approach. Ready to engage?
Discover how your startup can start simplifying cloud operations with AllCloud Engage.