Title

AWS re:Invent 2022 - Establishing your cloud foundation on AWS—beyond your landing zone (ARC205)

Summary

• Sam Elmalak, leader of the Cloud Foundations initiative at AWS, along with Alex Torres and Dipankar Biswas from EBSCO, discussed the importance of establishing a strong cloud foundation beyond just setting up a landing zone.
• The session emphasized that a cloud foundation is critical for enabling business goals and ensuring secure, compliant, and efficient operations in the cloud.
• The Cloud Foundations model was introduced, which outlines the capabilities needed to deploy, operate, and govern workloads in the cloud.
• The model includes 30 capabilities, which are not tied to specific AWS services but are essential for a robust cloud environment.
• The capabilities are categorized into infrastructure, security, resilience, finance, operations, and governance, risk management, and compliance.
• The session provided a guided path for establishing cloud foundations, including stakeholder involvement, decision-making, and a phased approach to building out capabilities.
• Dipankar Biswas shared EBSCO's journey and learnings in establishing their cloud foundation, highlighting the importance of multi-account strategy, IAM, operations, governance, business continuity, and fiscal visibility.
• The session concluded with a call to action to review the Cloud Foundations framework, white paper, and solutions provided by AWS, and to engage with AWS teams for support.

Insights

• Establishing a cloud foundation is akin to building a house; without a solid foundation, the entire structure is at risk. This analogy underscores the importance of having a reliable and scalable cloud infrastructure before focusing on specific applications or services.
• The Cloud Foundations model is service-agnostic, focusing on capabilities rather than specific AWS services, which suggests a shift towards a more holistic approach to cloud infrastructure that can adapt to various business needs and technical requirements.
• The phased approach to building cloud capabilities allows organizations to start with essential components and gradually add more complex elements as their cloud maturity increases.
• EBSCO's experience highlights real-world challenges and benefits of implementing a cloud foundation, including the need for workload isolation, least privilege access, and a balance between people, processes, and technology.
• The session's emphasis on stakeholder involvement and decision-making at the right time suggests that successful cloud adoption is not just a technical challenge but also an organizational one, requiring collaboration across different teams and departments.
• The availability of AWS resources, such as frameworks, white papers, and solutions, indicates AWS's commitment to supporting customers in their cloud foundation journey, providing guidance and tools to accelerate the process.
• The mention of a virtual track on cloud foundations and multi-account strategy at re:Invent suggests that AWS is focusing on educating customers about best practices and advanced strategies for cloud adoption and governance.