Listen to this podcast where Kevin Mead, Vice President of Business Development at Kinect Consulting, discusses the importance of the AWS Well-Architected Framework for federal agencies.
Speaker 1: On behalf of AWS and Carahsoft, we would like to welcome you to today's podcasts for our federal podcast series where Kevin Mead, Vice President of Business Development at Kinect Consulting, will discuss cloud one conformity, Kevin, the floor is all yours.
Kevin Mead: Thanks very much. Appreciate everybody spending some time with us today. So we're gonna talk about a topic of huge importance to federal agencies using AWS. And that's how can you continually optimize your AWS environment. So we're going to start with just a quick discussion of what is the well architected framework for AWS. So the AWS well, architected, well architected framework is best practices for designing and operating cloud environments that are optimized in terms of five pillars security, performance, reliability, cost, and operational excellence. So when you're well architected, it means you're adhering to these best practices. Why is being well architected so important? The simple answer is that when you're optimized in AWS, you receive the full value of the cloud, your systems run faster, break less, bounce back faster, when they do break, and you're more secure, more scalable, you pay less, and so on, it's all goodness. So once you've designed a well architected environment, you're not finished. And we could only wish it were that simple. Well architected is a rapidly moving target that we're always trying to hit. AWS is releasing hundreds of new service and 1000s of new features every year, and your agency's technology landscape is constantly changing. This is why it's critical for federal agencies using AWS to make well architected an ongoing discipline, rather than a one-time event. So what are some of the best practices around remaining well architected and making it an ongoing discipline? Well, I suggest that you tackle well architected like any other IP challenge, and consider it in terms of people, process and technology. Let me start with people. This is tricky because your people no matter how capable they are, have a lot on their plates. And with the speed of AWS releases, it's a real challenge for them to be fully up to speed. So that's why I recommend extending your team to include some outside resources, whose job it is to stay up to the second on the latest and greatest from AWS. Now, this could include your AWS account team, it could be a public sector partner, like Kinect Consulting, or it could be AWS technology partners, like Trend Micro, who frequently hosts immersion days for AWS, the best of all, is if you do this wisely, you can effectively extend your team with these resources at no cost. So that covers the people. Now what about process, depending on the size of your AWS footprint, we strongly recommend having formal well, architected reviews performed two to four times each year. This cost you nothing is very efficient, and it's extremely high value in terms of keeping your environment optimized. In a well architected review, we begin by assessing your overall AWS environment for areas where you're failing to comply with AWS best practices, we assess the risk level of each failure, ranging from you know, you're not succeeding here, but you can live with this, or this one could burn the agency down. So you should have fixed it yesterday, and everywhere in between. And this allows us to prioritize remediation based on the risk, we then do a deep dive into a single workload that you have running on AWS, and we start to fix some of your highest risk issues. This activity is so important to your success in the cloud, that AWS actually provides funding for us to do this work for you. So it costs your agency nothing to take advantage of these resources and make well architected a formal process at a recurring cadence that makes sense for your agency. Again, our recommendation somewhere from two to four times each year. So now we've addressed the people and the process. What about the technology, but even with recurring AWS well architected reviews taking place you still need to catch and fix some high risk issues that could surface day to day between reviews. The fortunately there are some very Reliable compliance tools that will do the heavy lifting for you. The one that we trust is cloud one conformity from Trend Micro. Conformity continually scans your AWS environment, to identify where you're failing to meet well architected best practices, it determines the risk level of each failure, and provides guidance to fix the issues is what we use to get a sprinting start into the well architected reviews we perform. The thing that's interesting is that when we use conformity, we generally uncover a bunch of technical considerations that we otherwise would not have seen through a discussion based, well architected review. But in the well architected reviews, where we're directly engaged with the people, we're able to identify more of the people and process issues that affect the value that you receive from the cloud. So when you combine the people Kinect Consulting is an extension of your team, the process, the AWS well, architected review on a recurring basis, and the technology, conformity from Trend Micro, it becomes the exact formula to optimize your AWS environment, and to advance the overall maturity of your cloud operating model. That's when you really start to receive the full benefit of everything that AWS has to offer. So let me give you a couple examples of where we've done this and how this has worked. And the first is a healthcare organization that we're working with, that's releasing to public facing applications in the next nine months. So their teams are stretched so thin, there's no way that they'd be focusing right now on their current environments, and if they're well architected. So in the process of our initial work, conformity identified several security and compliance failures around HIPAA, which after the full well architected review, we were able to remediate. That was a very high risk scenario that if it gone undetected, could have been disastrous for this organization. Needless to say, they have since decided to make the well architected a formal part of their process that happens every four months. They're also now conformity customers, as the visibility it provides proved key for them to identify these high risk issues, and to catch other risk issues in between the well architected reviews that we perform. Another great success story is a nonprofit association that we've supported for a few years. And they had two big challenges, both stemming from the same issue, a very tight budget. First, there, IT staff compensation is lower than market rates, which resulted in some skills gaps around AWS. Second, their budget constrained how many new initiatives they could take on. In the course of our well architected work with this association, we identified several cost optimization opportunities that have reduced their AWS spend by roughly 25%, which has provided them more money to accomplish more in the year to undertake more initiatives, we've also been able to transfer knowledge to their teams, including the cloud capabilities of their people. So they now two are conformity customers, and we're doing well our well architected reviews for them quarterly. So this is my final words to federal agencies using AWS, I would just reiterate a few points. First, AWS invests in this process, because it's so key to your cloud success. Next is that well architected is a moving target. So treat it as an ongoing discipline, not a one-time event. Next is that you have resources available to you, your count team from AWS firms, like Kinect Consulting, take advantage of them. The next thing I'd say is that you want to tackle this in terms of people process and technology, because you need all three to be really good at this. And finally, remember that being well architected is a key to realizing all the benefits that AWS has to offer. And those benefits are substantial to your agency. I hope you found this to be beneficial. And I thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Kevin. If you'd like more information on how Carahsoft or AWS can assist you, please visit www.carahsoft.com or email us at AWS@carahsoft.com. Thanks again for listening and have a great day.