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AWS Professional Services: Basics, benefits, and considerations

Originally Published July, 2024 · Last Updated November, 2024
AWS Professional Services

AWS Professional Services provides you with the expertise to optimize your cloud infrastructure, helping you deploy, operate, and manage your cloud environments effectively. Your business can leverage this specialized guidance to tailor AWS cloud capabilities to your specific needs, enhancing a diverse range of applications and services while maintaining cost efficiency.

AWS experts work alongside your team to facilitate processes such as system migration, service enhancement, and project management. They deliver hands-on guidance with an outcome-focused approach, easing the transition into cloud computing and allowing you to concentrate on expansion and customer success.

This article outlines everything you need to know about AWS Professional Services, including its offerings, benefits, and important considerations.

What is AWS Professional Services?

AWS Professional Services is a global team of cloud experts that helps you integrate AWS cloud services into your business architecture efficiently. 

These professionals collaborate closely with your internal team and an AWS Partner Network (APN) member to spearhead your cloud initiatives. This partnership helps you achieve your desired business outcomes faster and with less hassle. 

Image Source: AWS Professional Services

  • One core component of AWS Professional Services is design. They can help you craft a detailed, tailor-made blueprint that aligns with your unique requirements.
  • AWS consulting services ensure a smooth and efficient transition to cloud infrastructure, minimizing potential disruptions.
  • AWS Professional Services offers ongoing post-deployment assistance, helping you manage cloud-related issues. You will receive help with troubleshooting, performance optimization, and adapting to new features and technologies as they become available.

For businesses seeking a hands-off approach, AWS managed services are also available. These services handle the operational aspects of your Amazon Web Services environment, allowing you to focus on your core business functions without worrying about the day-to-day technicalities.

Image Source: AWS managed services

AWS Professional Services offerings

AWS offers a variety of professional services to support your organization’s transition to the cloud, each addressing a core business challenge. Some of the primary services are:

1. Migration

AWS excels in migrating applications, databases, and IT infrastructures to the cloud, involving a thorough assessment of your current systems to ensure a seamless and secure transition.

AWS professionals handle the migration end to end, minimizing downtime and disruption while configuring optimal AWS solutions tailored to your needs.

2. Cloud strategy and enterprise transformation

AWS provides expert guidance on developing a robust cloud strategy using the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework. This framework supports large-scale cloud adoption and enterprise transformation initiatives, aligning your business objectives with AWS capabilities.

Consultants support the redesign of business processes and adaptation to a cloud-first approach. They also offer expertise to help you understand AWS pricing models

3. DevOps and automation

AWS supports the implementation of DevOps practices, accelerating development and deployment cycles to quickly meet business demands. These practices enhance software development and operational efficiency through automation, continuous integration (CI), and continuous deployment (CD) pipelines.

4. Security, identity, and compliance

AWS Professional Services helps you secure applications and data within the cloud. This includes crafting strategies for identity management and compliance with industry regulations. In turn, you get robust cloud security architectures and risk management practices to protect your assets in the AWS Cloud.

5. Machine learning and artificial intelligence

AWS consultants utilize machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to develop cutting-edge solutions that enhance business operations and customer interactions. These services involve building and deploying systems capable of learning and reasoning, thereby expanding the capabilities of various applications.

6. Operational excellence and optimization

AWS Professional Services helps you achieve operational excellence by optimizing your cloud environments for reliability, performance, and cost-effectiveness. The service provides strategies and tools for continuous operational improvement and cost management, ensuring your investment in AWS services yields maximum value.

AWS also helps you with a list of leading AWS Partnered Cost-Optimization Platforms, which are designed to help you manage and optimize your spending on AWS, ensuring that you get the most value out of your cloud investment. 

7. Specialty practices

Finally, AWS Professional Services includes targeted specialty practices that address the needs of various industries through bespoke solutions. These specialty services include:

  • Financial services: Tailored consulting for compliance, security, and technological innovation in the financial sector
  • Healthcare and life sciences: Solutions that ensure compliance with healthcare regulations and leverage cloud technology for medical data management
  • Automotive, energy, manufacturing, and telecom: Industry-specific services that drive innovation and efficiency using cloud technologies
  • Emerging technologies: Cutting-edge areas such as quantum computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), and other advanced solutions available in the AWS Marketplace.

You can explore other AWS Professional services here

Benefits of AWS Professional Services

When you leverage AWS Professional Services, you tap into a wealth of expertise and support designed to help you extract maximum value from AWS. Here are some of the various benefits you can expect:

Expertise

AWS Professional Services grants you access to a team of specialists, including solutions architects and data scientists with deep knowledge of cloud computing. This team is dedicated to designing custom solutions that perfectly align with your project requirements, ensuring your cloud infrastructure supports your business goals.

Faster time to value

AWS Professional Services helps you optimize your cloud efficiency. By applying best practices and leveraging pre-built solutions, AWS experts help streamline your project implementation. This collaboration shortens the time it takes to see tangible returns, allowing your business to quickly reap the benefits of AWS.

The AWS Professional Services team builds with cloud economics in mind, prioritizing key pillars: cost savings, staff productivity, operational resilience, business agility, and sustainability. 

Image Source: AWS cloud economics

Reduced risk

Cloud adoption comes with certain risks, including security vulnerabilities and compliance challenges. AWS Professional Services mitigates these risks by integrating robust security measures and compliance protocols into your cloud strategy. 

This proactive approach safeguards your operations and ensures your cloud environment adheres to industry standards.

Innovation and scalability

With AWS Professional Services, you can effortlessly scale your operations to meet changing business demands. The service empowers you to leverage the latest AWS technologies, fostering innovation and facilitating the growth of your infrastructure alongside your business.

Global infrastructure

AWS’s extensive global infrastructure spans the United States, Canada, Brazil, Europe, and Australia, positioning your business closer to your customers. This global presence ensures optimal performance and visibility, enabling effective service deployment in markets worldwide.

Global reach and reliability

With AWS, your operations benefit from a worldwide network designed for utmost reliability and resilience. This extensive reach enhances your business’s capabilities, offering a consistent and reliable service experience to your customers around the clock.

AWS’s commitment to robust uptime and performance standards ensures a seamless operational experience, minimizing disruptions and enhancing customer satisfaction.

Considerations of AWS Professional Services

While it’s an excellent resource that can deliver a lot of value for your business, there are a few considerations you need to be aware of before using AWS Professional Services, including: 

Cost

While AWS Professional Services offers expertise to help you maximize your cloud investment, costs can vary depending on the services and support levels required. It’s important to carefully analyze these costs and consider options for optimization to stay within your budget.

Vendor lock-in

You may find yourself heavily reliant on AWS systems, which can lead to vendor lock-in. While not always detrimental, it’s important to understand the potential constraints this may impose on your strategic and design decisions. It’s advisable to weigh the benefits against the risks and prepare an exit strategy.

Project management

Effective project management is critical for success with AWS Professional Services. Clearly defining roles and responsibilities from the outset is essential to prevent overlaps and gaps in project ownership. Regular, structured communication and established channels for interaction with your AWS consultant are vital. Utilizing project management tools that integrate with AWS can significantly enhance visibility and control.

Limited customization

While AWS offers a robust architecture, your customization options may be limited for specific solutions. If your requirements don’t neatly align with the existing categories in the AWS Marketplace, consider how this may impact current and future business goals.

Complexity in integration

Integrating technology within the AWS ecosystem can be complex and might require substantial effort to align with your existing systems and processes. While AWS Professional Services can help you streamline integration, it may come with higher costs.

Get the most from your AWS investment with ProsperOps

Image Source: ProsperOps Discount Management Dashboard

While AWS Professional Services provides extensive resources and expertise to maximize your AWS cloud infrastructure, ProsperOps takes your ROI further with automated cost optimization that helps you maximize your business value from the cloud. We can help you:

  • Minimize waste: Trim down on unnecessary spending with ProsperOps’ robust algorithms that work around the clock, ensuring rate optimization in parallel with engineering optimization. With ProsperOps, customers typically achieve an Effective Savings Rate exceeding 45%, surpassing the industry average of less than 20%. 
  • Maximize savings: With ProsperOps’ autonomous nature, you’re able to secure savings consistently and without any ongoing effort on your part. Save on AWS resource usage costs through our autonomous discount management across some of the top AWS services such as EC2, OpenSearch, RDS, Redshift, Elasticache, and MemoryDB.
  • Reduce commitment risk: ProsperOps aims to minimize the financial risk associated with AWS commitments. We dynamically adjust your existing commitment portfolio in real time, optimizing coverage based on historical data and future usage projections.

Discover how ProsperOps can transform your AWS spending. Explore use cases and see the solution in action—book a ProsperOps demo today.

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