A few weeks ago we discussed some best practices that your IT business should follow in order to properly implement a hybrid or multi-cloud environment and avoid costly mistakes. The next logical step after reviewing, strategizing and incorporating AWS into your organization is to carefully optimize so that you’re getting the most out of your new IT infrastructure and investment.

There are many ways a business can go about optimizing AWS. This  includes implementing a workload and resource management strategy as well as analyzing costs in order to optimize based on need. Many organizations also find it helpful to bring in an expert to help guide their processes while others find that utilizing a multi-cloud management system does all of the above and more.

Ultimately, the final decision on how your organization implements and optimizes your AWS infrastructure will depend on your specific needs and the various skill sets of your team. No two companies or projects are alike and as we all know, things definitely change over time. Thankfully, AWS is made to be flexible and intuitive and so as long as you’re educated on how to properly optimize it, you will be pleasantly pleased with the results.

Following is a list of four things your business can do to ensure that you’re properly optimizing your AWS infrastructure. Although this list is far from exhaustive, we feel that it includes the top things your organization can do right now to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your investment both now, and in the future.

Top Four Things You Can Do to Optimize AWS

1. Choose the right AWS products for your workloads

Choosing the right AWS products for your workloads is a critical step that you should take to ensure that you’re properly optimizing your AWS infrastructure.

There are literally millions of ways that AWS can be configured and used and, in turn, just as many ways that organizations can get it wrong and deployments can go awry. It’s important that you harness these capabilities for building and hosting next-generation applications and their associated data in order to avoid unnecessary effort, operational risks and unneeded cloud spend.

The products and services available from AWS are offered in a variety of categories, including: computing, storage, databases, analytics, mobile, developer tools, management tools, loT, security and enterprise applications. Taking the time to analyze how each of these tools can help your organization is vital to the success of your AWS implementation.

For example, you can utilize a data pipeline to process and move data between different AWS compute and storage services or create metadata from your stored data with the click of a button. Even running virtual or augmented reality and 3D applications can be done quickly and easily without any specialized programming or 3D experience!

2. Optimize your resources through machine learning

Amazon machine learning provides your organization’s developers with visualization tools and wizards that will assist them in creating machine learning models.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with machine learning models, they allow you to obtain predictions for your applications using API’s.  These models will in turn allow you to make informed decisions for your business both now and in the future. The best part about machine learning with AWS is that your developers don’t need to be proficient at coding and you won’t need to increase staffing of the infrastructure in order to manage it.

Machine learning is most helpful when you can’t code the rules yourself or you’re handling a larger-scale problem. For example, you may find yourself wanting to figure out a solution for a  problem that has many possible answers or attempting to answer a question that a human couldn’t possibly figure out. This is when machine learning will be most useful. By creating learning models that will assist your organization in answering these difficult questions, machine learning will literally give you the solutions that will enable your business to exceed expectations.

3. Cost optimization

Arguably, cost optimization of your AWS will be the most important step your business takes to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your new infrastructure. After all, saving money is one of the main reasons that companies switch to AWS in the first place and is an underlying factor in all business decisions.

Although AWS provides you and your organization with flexible services and an opportunity to only pay for what you use, it’s important that your team monitor and forecast service usage in order to ensure that you’re maximizing your investment.

This usage can be monitored by accessing the AWS Management Console, Amazon CloudWatch and the AWS Trusted Advisor. We’ve talked about elasticity and flexibility in our previous posts about AWS and this is exactly what you’ll be monitoring when using these tools. This monitoring will ensure that you’re optimizing for cost while at the same time achieving your business goals.

You’ll most likely also utilize the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) which will allow you to customize your resources to meet your needs while at the same time optimize your overall spend. Imagine this feature as your own personal advisor, who’ll not only generate usage reports but will also offer recommendations for ways you can re-configure in order to save money. EC2 is one of the core components of AWS and the elasticity of this resource will go a long way in maximizing your return on investment.

4. Consider using a multi-cloud management platform to manage challenges

Despite the numerous success stories resulting from companies using AWS, there are also many challenges that can emerge, especially when attempting to optimize. Managing these challenges on your own can prove to be time-consuming, costly and ultimately eliminate some of the benefits that you would otherwise receive from utilizing AWS.

Connectria has carefully researched these challenges and has identified specific problems in three key areas: performance monitoring, security and compliance, and cost optimization.

To address these issues, we developed a way to help our customers solve these problems and more: our  TRiA Cloud Management Platform.

TRiA addresses these challenges in the following ways:

1. Performance Monitoring

• 24/7 custom performance monitoring
• Visibility and trending of all resources
• Identification of unusual changes in activity
• Technical support and management

2. Security and Compliance

• 24/7 advanced security monitoring
• Dashboard and email updates
• Tracking of compliance objectives and identification of potential compliance issues
• Management of compliance with active policy enforcement

3. Cost Optimization

• 24/7 usage monitoring
• A consolidated view of account and regional spend
• Identification of utilization issues
• Cost optimization recommendations
• The ability to enable predictable spending

By leveraging the power of TriA, Connectria helps companies like yours optimize their AWS infrastructure. Not only is your organization able to get the most out of your investment in AWS, but it’s also able to free up financial and personnel resources that can support business development and other company goals and initiatives.

Some Final Thoughts

We’ve really only hit the tip of the iceberg in this article when it comes to optimizing your AWS infrastructure. Part of the massive popularity and market dominance of AWS is due to its myriad customizations and modifications that truly do fit each user organization’s specific needs.  As a result it’s important to recognize that a list of best practices and recommendations can indeed be valuable, but also is just the beginning and not an endpoint in and of itself.

Taking the time to properly research the right tools to use for your workloads, utilizing machine learning, optimizing for costs and taking advantage a multi-cloud management platform are just some of the many ways you can optimize your AWS to ensure success. All of these factors should be carefully considered once you’ve determined your organizational need.

Amazon has some great guides and API references that you, your engineers or your developers can access. There are also excellent video tutorials, training and certification guides and whitepapers to help you along the way as well. If you’re stuck for time or resources, we suggest hiring an expert or contacting a company like Connectria to help guide your process.

If you have questions about implementing AWS for your company or utilizing our TRiA Multi-Cloud Management Platform, please reach out to us directly. One of our cloud advisors will be happy to discuss your IT requirements and objectives and help plan a strategy that will match your company’s needs.