Now more than ever, having a secure, high-performing, efficient and robust infrastructure for your applications is crucial when it comes to migrating to cloud. But how, exactly, can you achieve this? There are in fact, no fewer than 5 essential pillars to a well-architected AWS framework. But with them in place, you’ll have a system that will deliver what you need, now and in the future.

1. AWS Framework Security

The first pillar, unsurprisingly, is security. Protecting customer data is, after all, of paramount importance when planning and performing a workload migration. To that point, it’s good to know that the RiverMeadow SaaS Platform is the ONLY solution on the market that passes all the Amazon Web Services security mandates. 

2. Operational Excellence

The next pillar is the ability to run and monitor systems so you can achieve the most significant business value possible and as well as process improvements. Operational excellence is perfectly achievable however, by applying a number of design principles.

• Create operations as code (In effect, automate execution to limit human error)
• Note the documentation (Automate annotation to keep in synchronization)
• Perform changes (By reversing certain changes, you can prevent significant fails)
• Refine procedures (Keep testing to validate the effectiveness of processes)
• Anticipate errors (Conduct failure scenario tests to understand the impact of different cases)
• Learn from past failures (Use operational mistakes to drive future improvements)

3. Workload Migration Reliability

This pillar relates to a key requirement of the system – the ability to recover from disruption to the service or infrastructure, in order to meet business and customer demand. Obviously crucial to every system, this pillar is also based on applying a set of design principles.

• Test recovery methodology (By simulating different failure scenarios you can validate recovery strategies and reduce risks)
• Automate recovery (By setting key performance indicator failures to trigger automatically, you’ll anticipate errors before they happen)
• Increase system availability (If you replace massive resources with small resources, you will reduce the impact of failures)
• Identify resource capacity (Keep monitoring the demand for resources to maintain an optimal level of satisfaction)
• Manage change in automation (In effect, automate infrastructure changes)

4. Performance Efficiency

Pillar number four outlines how IT and the computing resources can be used in a way that maximises efficiency. This too can be achieved by adhering to the key principles.

• Democratize advanced technologies (Instead of training the internal IT department to run new technologies, enable users to access them as a service)
• Use a global approach (Deploy systems in multiple regions around the world to provide lower latency)
• Use server-less architectures (This removes the need to maintain server performance which lowers transactional costs)
• Test more options (Keep learning by testing and comparing scenarios in the cloud)
• Mechanical sympathy (Align the project objectives through the technology approach)

5. Cloud Migration Services Cost Optimization

The final pillar is close to the heart of every CFO - the ability to avoid cost and resources over-consumption. Once again, this can be achieved by sticking to 5 principles.

• Implement a consumption approach (Pay for the computing resources used by the system)
• Measure the general efficiency (Keep monitoring the output and the costs associated with it)
• Reduce spending on data center operations 
• Analyze expenditure (identify the general usage of resources, measure the return on investment and optimize the consumption process)
• Use managed services (Reduce the cost of ownership and remove operational activities)

These five pillars are critical to creating a well-architected framework and with a stable foundation your cloud migration journey will have a much greater chance of running smoothly.

To that end, it’s important to know that the RiverMeadow SaaS Cloud Migration platform is based on AWS's best practices. It meets all the AWS framework designs principles and is the only solution that passes all the security mandates, making it the bulletproof migration tool of choice.

Find out more about how you can dramatically reduce the time, cost and risk associated with moving workloads to the cloud by contacting us or by scheduling a demo.