What Are Your Options for Your AWS Support Plan?

There are several options to choose from for your AWS support, but it’s a choice many businesses are still struggling with.

We all know cloud technology has become a critical aspect of modern businesses. If you’re running your critical applications and business processes in the cloud, you simply cannot afford any down-time, poor performance, or security concerns.

If you don’t have sufficient AWS support in place, you’re leaving yourself open to serious risk. But how do you evaluate the options and make the right decision for your business’s cloud infrastructure? Let’s take a closer look…

Option 1 – DIY

One option is to have a team or employee maintain and support your own cloud in-house.

Saving on the cost of a specialist AWS partner may seem like an attractive option at first, but you’ll soon find this more challenging than expected.

The key issue here is the amount of time and money you’ll need to invest just to gain a basic level of support.

The drain on internal resources that you’ll experience from full-time cloud management is often unsustainable for smaller and medium-sized businesses.

Taking on your AWS support internally also involves the highest level of risk in some ways, with a long list of potential pitfalls involved.

Option 2 – Amazon Cloud Support

Another option is to work with Amazon directly for AWS support.

This is mostly delivered through online resources such as forums, wikis, documentation, and impersonal contact with a busy help desk.

The AWS support plans are separated into four tiers:

• Developer
• Business
• Enterprise On-Ramp
• Enterprise

Of course, Amazon is a huge global corporation, with hundreds of thousands of customers using its AWS cloud services. With that in mind, you won’t receive hands-on support directly from Amazon.

This option will leave you with only a very basic level of support to rely on, which also means you’re leaving your IT infrastructure at significant risk if any serious issues arise.

We’d recommend a more attentive, personalised, and cost-effective approach for cloud support, especially for small and medium-sized businesses.

Option 3 – Partners and Consultants

This is the most common option. You may even have an AWS support partner in place already, as Amazon encourages customers to leverage its partners within the cloud ecosystem.

These organisations come in all shapes and sizes, offering a variety of services and support packages.

Through its partner programme, you’ll find an organisation appropriate for the size of your business or your cloud investment.

• Small specialist partners or consultants
• Medium-sized partners
• Large-scale partners for enterprise

This is a good approach, but you should be aware that each partner will also be limited by its resources, number of clients, and technical capabilities.

It’s often more reliable and cost-effective than working directly with Amazon, but partners can only give you so much time when they’re juggling other clients.

While we’d suggest working with a partner is a preferable option to relying on Amazon directly, it’s worth doing some more digging to find an even better approach.

Option 4 – A New Level of Cloud Support

The fourth option is to go beyond the support available from a regular partner, and enhance that with automation tools and other intuitive software.

The cloud is so vast and complex, your business should ideally have advanced technology in place to remove the risk and uncertainty of an ever-changing IT infrastructure.

When you’ve placed your critical applications and business processes in the cloud, you need a support service that will ensure:

• Reliability
• Consistency
• Accuracy
• Predictability
• Efficiency
• Scalability

The best way to achieve this with full confidence is to leverage automation technology designed specifically to support cloud deployments, this is where IG CloudOps cloud management software plays a role in helping organisations manage their AWS cloud deployments. 

Next Steps

When it comes to the cloud, it’s so important to ensure your business has access to round-the-clock monitoring, maintenance, support, and much more.

To learn more about how to assess your options for AWS support, the pros and cons, and how to make the right decision for your business, read our in-depth article here.