What is AWS Managed Services?

AWS Managed Services offer AWS Server Support in transitioning from traditional hardware and software systems to cloud-based infrastructure, facilitating the adoption of AWS cloud services. These services encompass the ongoing management and maintenance of your cloud infrastructure, allowing you to focus on your core business applications.


The AWS managed services team assumes full responsibility for the operation of all AWS-supported services for your organization. They provide convenient access through consoles and APIs, enabling you to request new resources, adjust capacity levels (such as scaling out or scaling in compute resources), and implement other necessary changes. Furthermore, you can report any issues related to the services managed by AWS on your behalf. By entrusting your infrastructure components to AWS, your team is liberated to concentrate on the development and operation of your business applications.

Read More: How to Choose the Ideal Option for Your AWS Support Plan

CLOUD ADOPTION

The initial phase of cloud adoption involves assessing the proposed operations model and meticulously planning the process of migrating to the cloud. With the expertise of the AWS Server Support team, who possess a deep understanding of their infrastructure and the seamless integration of available services, they can offer tailored recommendations that best suit your specific use case. Moreover, they are equipped to identify and resolve any issues that may arise along the way. Consequently, you can run your applications on a vast number of servers, ranging from hundreds to thousands, without the need to concern yourself with the underlying IT infrastructure.

To effectively manage the multitude of potential services throughout the service design, service transition, service operation, and continual service improvement cycles, AWS Managed services seamlessly integrate with ITIL frameworks. The ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a comprehensive framework designed to standardize the lifecycle of IT services across organizations. AWS Managed Services align with ITIL's principles and incorporate ITIL-based control and operational structures, allowing them to seamlessly integrate into your existing ITIL framework.

Recognizing the importance of the five ITIL stages—service strategy, design, transition, operation, and improvement—AWS managed services provide comprehensive guidance, automation, standardized APIs, and streamlined processes for provisioning and managing the infrastructure upon which your applications will run.

WHAT DOES AWS MANAGED SERVICES DO FOR YOU

Many organizations often face a common challenge: a lack of personnel with the necessary cloud skills to effectively set up infrastructure and migrate from on-premises IT systems. Consequently, when the decision to transition to the cloud is made, the actual implementation process can be plagued by lengthy delays as staff members either undergo training or new hires are sought. Moreover, the demand for such skills is high, further exacerbating the difficulty of finding qualified individuals.

Alternatively, organizations may choose to outsource their cloud migration to consultants. However, this approach often proves to be expensive, involves lengthy contractual agreements, and introduces its own set of challenges.

To address these issues, AWS managed services offer a solution. By engaging the experienced AWS managed services team, organizations can expedite the migration process and eliminate the delays typically associated with it. AWS Managed Services provide a reliable option for organizations looking to transition to the cloud without the need for extensive training or costly long-term contracts with external consultants.

The AWS Managed Services team offers a comprehensive set of services to ensure the smooth and efficient operation of your AWS infrastructure. Here's how we can make it better:

  • Build and Configure: Our team will expertly create your managed account and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), along with configuring the necessary AWS settings to quickly get you up and running.
  • Provision Popular Stacks: Through our provisioning API, you can easily request popular applications and software stacks. We provide a wide range of pre-configured options, enabling you to deploy the stacks you need with ease.
  • Self-Service Deployment: With our self-service deployment capabilities, you have the flexibility to request the deployment of various technology stacks 24/7. Our efficient processes ensure that these deployments can be rolled out within minutes, minimizing any downtime.
  • Change Management: Our AWS Managed Services team takes care of coordinating and managing scheduled approvals and changes to your production environments. This ensures that all modifications are implemented smoothly and without disruption.
  • Proactive Maintenance: We take care of the day-to-day maintenance tasks for you. Our team monitors for updates and applies patches to your running application stacks, maintains anti-virus software, and provides continuous monitoring and advice on network intrusions to enhance security.
  • Incident Response: In the event of any detected or reported incidents or unexpected events, our dedicated AWS Managed Services team will promptly respond. We have the expertise to mitigate risks, minimize the impact, and restore services efficiently.
  • Reporting and Transparency: To keep you informed about the activity on your AWS account, a dedicated Cloud Service Delivery Manager (CSDM) will provide monthly reports. Additionally, you will have access to CloudWatch and CloudTrail data, ensuring transparency and visibility into your operations and maintenance.

CLOUD OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

The team responsible for your managed services comprises a highly skilled group of AWS engineers and experienced management staff. Their primary goal is to safeguard your infrastructure by ensuring its security, monitoring its performance, and keeping it up to date. Here are the key functions and capabilities they provide:

24x7 Service Desk: Service requests can be logged 24/7 via the web portal, CLI, or API call and serviced by support teams in Sydney, Seattle, and Dublin. 

Access Management: Various login options are available, but Active Directory with established SSO or existing corporate login methods is the preferred option.

Automation: Leverage automation across a variety of tasks and processes to reduce turnaround times when requesting change requests, onboarding tasks, stack deployments, and other tasks. 

Capacity Management: AWS commonly employs native scaling mechanisms to enable your environment to expand or contract based on demand. By analyzing your monthly reports, you can assess the capacity required for both static deployments and AWS can offer recommendations for optimizing your system.

Change Management: AWS takes responsibility for managing and executing modifications to managed environments based on requests for change (RFC) that you can conveniently submit through the console, CLI, or API. These changes adhere to a change management process, with a significant portion being automated for enhanced efficiency.

Configuration Management: Create and uphold a state of coherence within the environment.

Backups: AWS Managed Services will guarantee the creation and upkeep of snapshots for EBS and RDS database services, ensuring uninterrupted business operations in case of any failure.

Event, Incident, and Service Request Management: The AWS monitoring system, which is managed by AWS itself, takes care of identifying and overseeing significant occurrences.

Host Security: The managed environment employs security features to safeguard individual hosts. Each account is assigned a single tenant and utilizes shared service subnets. A client agent is responsible for overseeing all instances within the subnet.

Log Management: Collecting and analyzing logs produced by EC2 instances, customer applications, and various other components within the AWS environment.

Monitoring: The team responsible for delivering AWS Server Management service will employ CloudWatch and OpsWorks to receive alerts when there are suboptimal conditions and take action when engineer involvement is necessary.

Patching: Continual maintenance of operating system-level packages on supported AWS operating systems involves either updating AMIs within application stacks or deploying monthly patches using an agent-based approach.

Provisioning: With this service, you have the ability to generate and implement fresh resources within your managed environment.

Reporting: Your Comprehensive Security and Data Management (CSDM) delivers a monthly summary that encompasses incidents, capacity, security, and financial data.

Service Knowledge Management: Provides access to all data related to AWS Managed services, including deployments, stack templates, and updates for deployed resources.

HOW IS AWS MANAGED SERVICES SET UP?

When you decide to utilize AWS Managed Services, a partner specializing in systems integration will gather information about your existing network access and application requirements. Based on this information, the AWS team will create a managed account that includes the necessary Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) and resources. Once this is set up, you can collaborate with the AWS team or integration partners to initiate the deployment of your applications and migrate them to the cloud account.

If you need to make any changes to the managed account, such as modifying settings or configurations, you must submit a request for change (RFC) using the console, API, or command-line interface (CLI). This same method can also be utilized to request assistance from the AWS team in response to incidents or unexpected events.

Typically, you would select a new application stack from a predefined list of templates, which will be provisioned into specific managed AWS VPCs to become managed application stacks. The stack itself represents a collection of AWS services that are managed together as a unified entity. When an RFC is received to deploy a new stack, the AWS Managed Services team will deploy the corresponding template and then integrate it with configuration management, endpoint security, backup, and monitoring services. At this stage, the newly deployed stack becomes a managed application stack, and the responsibility for its management falls on the managed services team.

Read More: Should Your Startup Use AWS Managed Services?

AWS MANAGED SERVICES TEAM ROLES

As you work with AWS Managed Services, you will progress through three tiers of AWS employee roles specific to the managed services tier. 

The first individuals mentioned are the business development managers (BDMs). 

  • BDM works with you to understand your needs, identify your interests, discuss pricing models, negotiate terms, and execute signed contracts.  

The next group consists of Technical Delivery Managers (TDMs).

  • After the contract is established, a Transition and Deployment Manager (TDM) will assume responsibility for overseeing the onboarding, migration, and transition of applications. The TDM's primary role involves coordinating with system integration partners, and AWS engineers, and providing training to both the customer's staff and partners. The TDM will assess the current workloads and operational processes, ensuring the successful migration of pilot applications. Additionally, they will organize on-site discovery workshops to determine the scope and develop a plan for moving application workloads to the managed application stacks.

The third group consists of individuals who hold the role of Cloud Service Delivery Managers (CSDMs)

  • You'll be assigned a dedicated Customer Success Manager (CSDM) as soon as your initial application workloads are moved over to the managed account. 
  • With the help of your CDSM, you can rest assured that your AWS services will always be delivered as planned.
  • Your CSDM will provide guidance on best practices for AWS to help guarantee the efficiency, reliability, and safety of your AWS workloads.
  • The CSDM's main responsibility is keeping tabs on the assets in your managed account and providing monthly updates.
  • Your CSDM is there to help you get things back on track as soon as possible if something goes wrong or doesn't work as intended.

GETTING STARTED WITH AWS MANAGED SERVICES.

After all, we've covered, determining if AWS Managed services are right for your company is no easy task. AWS Managed Services do not have an automated online ordering or provisioning system since it takes time to evaluate your workloads and current applications to see if they are a good fit for your organization.

Expressing interest via AWS's managed services page will prompt a Business Development Manager to get in touch with you.

WHAT IS THE BENEFIT OF USING AWS MANAGED SERVICES?

Certainly, the AWS Managed Service team may come at a higher cost, but when comparing it to the expenses of hiring engineers and acquiring hardware to deploy and oversee applications internally, opting for AWS to handle the deployment and management of your infrastructure could prove to be a more economical choice in the long run.

By utilizing AWS Managed Services to take care of your AWS account, you can direct your attention towards application development or running your business, rather than dealing with network management and all the related tasks such as resource management, software updates, backups, and maintenance.

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Manish Lakhera

Best Server Support Management Company

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