Why AWS for DevOps? Everything You Need to Know

DevOps can give businesses an edge over competitors to produce better technology, faster. But to follow DevOps philosophy, you need tools to help you. Here’s exactly what the DevOps philosophy is, why you should use it, and how AWS can help you. 

What is DevOps? And Why Use It?

According to AWS, DevOps is: 

DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes. This speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and compete more effectively in the market.

In other words, DevOps is a culture that you build with tools like AWS that improves your delivery of applications for clients.

By following a DevOps model, your business gains:

• Speed: Move faster, adapting to market and customer demands. With this increase in momentum, you can get ahead of your competitors.
• Fast delivery: Release bug fixes and improvements quicker. By launching software updates faster you exceed customer expectations, promoting satisfaction and loyalty.
• Reliability: As well as increasing your pace, your product becomes more reliable. Again, having a dependable product improves customer satisfaction.
• Scale: As your business grows, so does your technology. Following DevOps methodologies, you can manage processes at scale.
• Improve collaboration: Collaboration between operations and development teams improves with clear accountability and communication.

DevOps in the AWS Ecosystem

With AWS, you have a whole suite of services that complement DevOps. Their infrastructure and products work well with DevOps to help teams build and deliver products quickly, reliably, and efficiently.

Why Choose AWS for DevOps?

Using AWS, you have a platform that allows you to:

• Scale quickly, 
• Automate processes,
• Be flexible enough to grow your business, and change workflow,
• Optimize your development and speed up innovation using DevOps and AWS,
• Get access to automation tools and services, such as AWS Cloud Foundation,
• Use AWS CodePipeline to build a Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) workflow.

AWS DevOps for Large Enterprises

In a large enterprise, it can be hard to implement AWS DevOps as you need to get buy-in from so many different teams. In many companies, teams end up being siloed and there isn’t a shared understanding of how cloud tools and DevOps can improve speed, transparency, and user satisfaction. 

Businesses need to address these challenges by providing shared training and having people foster a DevOps culture within the organization. 

You can also work with an AWS partner, such as StratusGrid, to provide support throughout these changes. An experienced partner can help you to identify what AWS tools will best support you, and how you can optimize your cloud environment to get the most out of DevOps best practices. 

Find out more about how StratusGrid can support you by booking a free consultation.

AWS DevOps for Financial Optimization

Managing finances is key when using the cloud, as your bill can balloon fast. So working with both FinOps and DevOps within AWS is a great way to stay on top of this potential issue.

In DevOps, CI is very important. AWS empowers you to do that easily. When working with CI, you can use tools to identify places where performance could be improved, potentially reducing costs. 

Within your database, you can also streamline your queries to only fetch what you need. By getting only essential information you ensure cost effectiveness and maximum operational efficiency.

The 3 Main Challenges in AWS Adoption

When adopting AWS, many companies struggle with migrating, data security, and scaling.

• Migration: Since migrating to AWS can be difficult, you need to conduct a full analysis of your applications and then move them securely. 

• Security: Ensuring data security in the cloud is something you do need to discuss. Analyze security vulnerabilities in AWS and make sure that you have protections. In the cloud, AWS has security measures in place but it is your responsibility to check you’ve activated them correctly.
• Scale: The cloud can be a highly complex environment. To get insights into your data and understand your new infrastructure, you need to understand how the cloud works. If you don’t yet have this knowledge, it can slow you down as you try to scale.

StratusGrid can help with all three of these challenges. We have over 10 years of experience with AWS and have helped over 100 companies to migrate to the cloud. When we migrate or modernize cloud environments, we implement full security policies. We also work with you so that you understand your infrastructure, extract data, and grow. You can book a consultation with us here.

Now let’s dive into our unique approach to AWS DevOps.

StratusGrid’s Approach to AWS DevOps

Migration and Modernization

If you still work with on-premises data centers StratusGrid partners with you to migrate to the AWS Cloud.

Our approach is a 3-step process:

1. Assess: We analyze your current applications and infrastructure. We also collaborate closely with you to understand your company’s unique needs. This is the foundation of our migration work.
2. Mobilize: We start our building work by starting with the structure of your new environment. This process includes configuring your AWS account, and guiding you through pilot migrations. 
3. Migrate: We delicately transfer all your data to the cloud. We make sure that this doesn’t impact your systems’ performance and that it is fully secure. 

Now let’s say that your company is already on the cloud, but you’re having problems with it. You’re having trouble deploying improvements, bugs are more frequent and your environment is inconsistent. If that’s the case, you need to modernize your environment.

At StratusGrid we have a tried and tested model to modernize your AWS:

1. Alignment: We align your business’s goals to measure results more effectively.
2. Planning: At this step, we create a full plan for your cloud improvements, aligned with your goals.
3. Test and execute: Here we test our hypotheses. Once that’s finalized, we execute the full modernization. We work closely with you to monitor the full process and make changes if needed.
4. Review results: Finally, StratusGrid creates a full presentation of what was accomplished. In this meeting, we review the impact together.

By modernizing, you apply DevOps principles more effectively. You can manage processes efficiently, automate manual tasks, scale easily, and deploy quickly.

Stabilization and Continuous Improvement

When you scale beyond your infrastructure’s capability, have unanticipated technical debt, regional usage variations, or misunderstood traffic patterns, you significantly impact your organization's ability to deliver services consistently and efficiently.

That’s the moment to start a stabilization project. At StratusGrid, we can restore your environment’s reliability. This type of plan improves user confidence, customer satisfaction, improved scalability, competitive advantage, and cost savings. Once we fix the root cause, your roadmap becomes clear with our well-explained documentation.

With this stabilization, continuous improvement and delivery are much easier to do. This key DevOps principle becomes simpler with a reliable, efficient AWS environment. With CI, you frequently integrate code changes in the shared source code repository. 

Then with CD, you integrate, test, and deliver those changes in the form of product improvements. With this CI/CD, your customers become more satisfied, and your company becomes more agile.

Embrace The Future of DevOps with AWS and StratusGrid

By marrying DevOps with AWS, you get the methodology and the tools for a harmonious, agile, and efficient marriage. With StratusGrid as your guide, you get clear insights and recommendations of what to focus on next. Book a consultation with StratusGrid today.

BONUS: Download Your FinOps Guide to Effective Cloud Cost Optimization Here ⤵️