For all the problems a move to the cloud can solve for CIOs looking to optimize and stabilize their critical workloads through a cloud migration, they often face subsequent challenges that may not have been thought through completely. The next big hurdle is ensuring their cloud infrastructure is secure, reliable, performant, cost-optimized, and aligned with business objectives. This is where a Well-Architected Review comes in.
Developed by AWS, the Well-Architected Framework is a set of best practices and guidelines for designing, deploying, and operating systems in the cloud. It consists of six pillars: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability.
Why should this matter to CIOs? Because being proactive about conducting a Well-Architected Review can provide invaluable insights into the health and efficiency of your AWS environment. It’s an opportunity to identify and mitigate risks before they impact your business in a significantly negative way.
Key Benefits of a Well-Architected Review Every CIO Should Know
1. Identify and Prioritize Risks
A Well-Architected Review will uncover high-risk issues across all framework pillars, ranging from security vulnerabilities to reliability concerns to cost inefficiencies. You’ll get a prioritized list of findings based on the potential impact to your business, enabling you to focus remediation efforts where they have the biggest impact.
2. Benchmark Against Best Practices
By evaluating your workloads against the Well-Architected Framework, you can see how your architecture and operational practices measure up to AWS best practices. You gain a roadmap for continuous improvement and helps ensure you’re leveraging the full potential of AWS services.
3. Optimize Costs
One of the most compelling reasons to conduct a Well-Architected Review is the potential for cost savings. The review process will identify underutilized or over-provisioned resources, suggest opportunities for right-sizing instances, and recommend more cost-effective services or pricing models. Considering that organizations waste an average of 32% of their cloud spend, according to Flexera’s 2023 State of the Cloud Report, the savings can be substantial.
4. Boost Performance and Reliability
Performance inefficiencies and reliability risks can directly impact your end-users and bottom line. A Well-Architected Review will flag architectural choices that may be hindering performance, identify single points of failure, and provide recommendations to improve the resiliency of your workloads.
5. Enhance Security Posture
With the shared responsibility model of cloud security, CIOS must ensure their portion of security responsibilities are properly met. The security pillar of the Well-Architected Framework covers areas like identity and access management, data protection, incident response readiness, and more. The review will highlight gaps in your security posture and provide a roadmap to fortify your defenses.
6. Align with Sustainability Goals
The newly added sustainability pillar is particularly relevant for organizations with sustainability commitments. A Well-Architected Review will assess your current sustainability practices and provide recommendations to minimize the environmental impact of your cloud usage. This could involve optimizing the geographic placement of workloads, right-sizing computing resources, or adopting more sustainable software architecture patterns.
Getting Started with Well-Architected Reviews
I have some good news for the CIO who may feel that a Well-Architected Review is a huge, daunting effort. Our team at Soliant Consulting can perform a Well-Architected Review in as little as 2-4 hours; in most cases, we can share helpful data with you on the same day. Rather than trying to boil the ocean, our streamlined review process focuses on identifying the highest-impact improvements you can make right away, setting you on a pragmatic path to improving your workload in AWS.
Because of the investments we’ve made in this area, time commitment isn’t a barrier to entry for our clients who want to receive a review of their AWS workload. Many organizations work with an AWS Partner like us to streamline the review process. As an Advanced Tier Services Partner with a Well-Architected Program membership, Soliant leverages proprietary automation and deep expertise to deliver reviews efficiently and quickly.
In addition to the efficiency of our review process, we’re committed to making Well-Architected Reviews accessible and beneficial for all our clients. For a limited time, we’re offering these reviews at no cost – you can receive a comprehensive assessment of your AWS workload and a prioritized remediation plan without any upfront investment.
However, the financial benefit of working with us on a review doesn’t stop there. By partnering with us for your Well-Architected Review, we’ll also guide you through obtaining service credits from AWS. If you work with us to remediate a sufficient number of High Risk Issues (HRIs) identified in the review, you may be eligible for AWS service credits that can offset future costs.
Get Your No-Cost Well-Architected Review
At Soliant, we believe every organization should have access to the insights and expertise needed to achieve cloud excellence. Our no-cost Well-Architected Review offering and assistance with AWS service credits reflect that commitment. Let us help you optimize your AWS workload and maximize the value of your cloud investment.
