Content management error: Header Banners should not be placed in the Navigation placeholder!
Content management error: Generic Content Banners should not be placed in the Navigation placeholder!
Welcome to the second article in our AWS Migration Considerations Series. You can find the start of the series here.
There are several ways that the hyperscale cloud environment of AWS works, from classical virtual machines, to containers, and serverless offerings. The assessment of which migration path works for you is covered in the article Migration Methodologies.
Much has been said about cost savings, performance, reliability, and all these advantages should be considered, architected, implemented, and then operated in cloud. And that effort requires consideration; it does not just happen and is an operational cost.
AWS started in 2006 with the Simple Queue Service, and as we hit 2021, that will mark 15 years of continual operation of the service. The same APIs that were defined a decade and a half ago can still be used today. The operational stability makes this dependable. And while the encryption protocols and ciphers used in transit may be updated to deal with today’s threats, older services can still rely on these systems.
AWS says that security is job zero. Their security teams are proactive on maintaining their managed services, ensuring that critical exploitable vulnerabilities are address effectively.
In 2014, when the Heartbleed vulnerability was breaking news, AWS managed load balancing service, Elastic Load Balancing, was patched worldwide for all customers within 24 hours. Meanwhile, there are still load balancers deployed outside of the cloud that are susceptible to this; in 2017 a report showed there were still around 200,000 impacted devices. Using Shodan.io in 2020 still has a handful remaining!
However, security is a joint responsibility: the security of the cloud, and security in the cloud. AWS manages the “of the cloud”, while the customer (or their managed services partner) manages the “in the cloud”.
The shared security model is a key concept to understand. It is not a given that your virtual machine, that you have secured, is going to get patched and updated for you by AWS (there is an AWS managed service, but you will still have to patch and maintain your application on your virtual machine).
Having the ASW environment flexible enough to run almost any workload makes it applicable to nearly everything. Some cloud providers have niche or specific workloads they cater for, forcing you to stitch together distributed solutions form different providers.
The industrial revolution has commoditised much the IT infrastructure game. In just the same way that universal access to electricity (via a grid) means that all people have reasonably reliable access to power, the same has been democratised and made universally available for not just compute, but multiple Availability-Zone based, well architected compute.
It’s disappointing to have to reference this one, but some cloud providers would replicate your data worldwide, or only offer durable storage if you choose another country to replicate to. Both options are highly unpalatable to many organisations. Should you select to have replication to other locations, this can be done (and even done as a managed service).
It is also worth noting some of the AWS AI services may copy data to other regions, as noted by Scott Piper in his post “to develop and improve AWS and affiliate machine-learning and artificial-intelligence technologies”.
The ability to add, and remove, chargeable resources, on demand, automated without having to negotiate, schedule, and wait is itself a miracle.
There is a lot of software that already supports AWS APIs, which makes solutions easy to deploy and maintain.
You may not want to force your provider to under bill you, the long-term profitability and longevity of the service you depend upon may be in question. But you do not want it to be overpriced.
While we see efficiencies being made, then it makes sense to share some of that with the customer, which is why AWS has applied reduced pricing to some services over time. What is more impressive, the price drops are automatic, with no customer action required to benefit. This breeds customer loyalty, and often feeds more demand.
Cloud Providers that don’t continuously improve their offerings, modernising and securing the parts of the technology stack that are their responsibility, are frozen in time. For example, a CDN service that today does not offer the current TLS 1.3 protocols for ensuring the secure transport of data over untrusted networks will soon be eclipsed by more nimble competitors. Likewise, a CDN service that does not restrict to only the latest protocols will fail compliance requirements for many organisations.
Strong providers in the Hyperscale Cloud space introduce new capabilities without any immediate negative impact on currently deployed customers. Managed seamless transitions in technologies – sunrises, transitions, and sunsets are key to stability and customer satisfactions.
For the last 10+ years, Gartner has ranked AWS as the leading hyperscale Cloud provider. Forester Wave articles consistently call out various AWS services amongst the strongest in their field.
The level of detail that the analysts go through with the providers are extensive, and cover all areas of operations, service development, security, and much more.
While these reports of and by themselves are insufficient, as supporting evidence to the above considerations they help to confirm the capability to date, giving confidence to the consumer.
You have a lot to think about when choosing a cloud provider. And while many will show you instantaneous results, the reality is this takes time, effort, and attention to detail that can only be done with focus (and experience).
Modis has been an AWS Consulting Partner since 2013. You can learn more about our AWS Practice and services here.
Content management error: Generic Content Banners should not be placed in the Navigation placeholder!
Content management error: Generic Content Banners should not be placed in the Navigation placeholder!