3 Benefits of AWS Modernisation for Small and Medium Businesses

Today, digital technologies have opened up a new world of possibilities for modernising small and medium businesses (SMBs). Some growing companies like yours are taking on initiatives improving telecommunications programs and increasing customer service effectiveness with newer, flexible IT Cloud services. However, many companies are lagging behind in the digital revolution when it comes to innovation, infrastructure modernisation, and security upgrades.

We recognise that staffing is a main barrier to scaling your business—especially when you may not have dedicated in-house IT staff or experience a skills gap among your talent.

These are three of the main AWS modernisation benefits our customers care about most:

• Cost savings
• Multi-region scalability
• Adding a layer of cybersecurity

Let’s look into them!

3 Benefits of AWS Modernisation

Benefit 1: Cost savings in the Cloud

Modernising your application is a smart way to help reduce your monthly overhead costs, while increasing resource efficiency and decreasing complexity. Serverless services can be utilised to help optimise hosting apps, data, and storage, while also providing you with better scalability, reliability, and flexibility. Serverless means a Cloud provider such as AWS manages a server on your behalf which allows you to focus on other parts of the business.

Devoteam has helped businesses take compute costs from hundreds of US Dollars a month to significantly less. We achieve this by analysing SMBs’ IT infrastructure and recommending more cost-effective Cloud alternatives. Once the business signs off on those recommendations, we then assist in the migration of their systems from the initial services to the appropriate Amazon Web Services solutions.

An additional benefit of helping businesses to migrate to more cost-effective options with serverless offerings, is that these new services are also easier to manage with less potential of system failure and application downtime. In these cases, AWS uses a shared responsibility model so your business can focus on doing what it does best—driving business value. 

Benefit 2: Multi-region scalability for SMBs

Another practical benefit of AWS modernisation is being able to launch necessary IT infrastructure for multiple regions. Here’s one use case you may be familiar with: The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has made the geographic location of data more important than ever. In the past, companies that operated globally could store all user data in one region. However, rules such as GDPR mean that user data might not be allowed to leave the region they originate from. Companies have to now have their services and databases in multiple geographic regions to simplify and satisfy regulatory requirements.

The act of deploying new technology to a new region manually is both time consuming and prone to human error. For example, if an engineer fails to deploy a small but relevant service in the new region it could lead to errors and outages that impact the customer experience. This could harm your brand’s reputation and even lead to decreased sales during the outage.

Devoteam recently assisted a business that had legacy, on-premises datacentres in Ireland but needed to quickly launch services in the United States to grow their business. We helped them to script their entire IT infrastructure which meant they could deploy all their applications and databases in a new region with the click of a button. We were able to take a process that would have taken weeks—and been full of errors—and used automation to deploy in minutes rather than weeks. Better time to market is what every company wants and we can help you achieve that goal. Legacy systems shouldn’t impede your growth.

Benefit 3: Adding a layer of cybersecurity

Finally, a big concern businesses face is effectively securing their online assets from unauthorised users. Some common tactics include Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) events where bots flood your web service with so much overwhelming traffic that your legitimate customers cannot access your servers. Other risks include not encrypting relevant stored data and not having visibility into who has access to web services, which means a third-party could gain access unbeknownst to you.

One component of modernising involves leveraging AWS Managed Services to add more security. Devoteam has worked with businesses of all sizes to configure AWS Managed Services to improve visibility into potential security events. An example we see quite regularly is that after we configure Amazon GuardDuty—a service which automatically scans the network logs for threats—it flags a server that is currently experiencing DDoS events. This helps provide you with visibility into a problem which can be swiftly remediated.

We have also helped clients to become more proactive in their security posture. By enabling security services such as AWS Security Hub, which provides visibility into potential security risks in the business’ AWS environment, we can see if storage is not encrypted or if any security groups are too permissive. This allows a business to close any security gaps before they are exploited by unauthorised users. If you’ve ever struggled with access permissions for new and departing employees this can be helpful. Learn more about the AWS Shared Responsibility Model.