10 Ways to Modernize, Optimize & Monetize on AWS as Business Grows

Introduction

In this blog, we will explore 10 effective strategies to modernize, optimize, and monetize on AWS as your business grows. These strategies are designed to help SMBs maintain or increase productivity with reduced budgets, embrace DevOps, and effectively utilize cloud technology for growth and innovation.

Key Points on Modernization and Growth

• Many organizations are being asked to do more with less, indicating the need to maintain or increase productivity with reduced budgets.

• The majority of the audience believes they have the right skills but may lack the necessary time to bring innovation to light.

• Most attendees work for organizations focused on growth, whether in revenue, impact, or customer base, positioning them in the right place for the discussion.

• The first trend is the migration of workloads to AWS, highlighting the continued need for migration and the common approach of lift and shift for first-time movers.

• The second trend involves modernizing what is on the cloud, emphasizing the adoption of cloud native services for increased innovation and agility.

• An integrated approach combines modernization and migration, recognizing the extra effort involved but promising greater benefits.

• The focus on growth involves embracing DevOps as a fundamental part of any modernization journey, allowing for fast flow of software through the organization and challenging traditional mindsets.

Modernizing Enterprises with Cloud Technology

• The speaker discusses the shift towards making a huge insurance company a serverless first Enterprise by driving a modernization journey for around 10 years with a focus on serverless principles and practices.

• Adrian Cockroft, a leader at AWS and the individual who brought Netflix to the cloud, advised the speaker to write a book, which led to the publication of ‘The Value Flywheel Effect.’ This book serves as a handbook for modernization and driving change in organizations using modern cloud technology.

• The company, Globalization Partners (GP), specializes in the employer of record category, enabling companies to hire individuals in nearly 200 countries without setting up entities in those countries. The company’s emphasis on modern technology as the driver of its global scale is evident in its use of modern AWS technology for global growth.

• The five key measures for a modern engineering team include the ability to deliver on demand, evolve technology quickly, consider commercial responsibility, operate independently, and maintain high-quality standards. The team uses the AWS Well-Architected Framework to ensure security, cost optimization, operational excellence, reliability, and performance in every engineering sprint.

Cost Optimization and Time Optimization

• Cost optimization involves understanding the factors that contribute to costs, which are usage and rate. Usage is the unit describing the usage of each underlying service, while the rate is the amount paid per unit of usage.

• Practical steps for cost optimization include actions for beginner, intermediate, and advanced users. Prioritizing actions that have rapid implementation and high impact on savings is crucial for maximizing return on investment.

• The beginner action involves selecting the right pricing model, such as on-demand, Savings Plan, Reserve instance, and spot instances, to potentially save up to 90%. Intermediate actions include utilizing AWS intelligent tools like AWS Compute Optimizer, AWS Autoscaling, and Amazon S3 Intelligent Tiering to improve performance and cost efficiency.

• For advanced users leveraging AWS infrastructure for AI applications, optimizing cost can be achieved through custom chips, tranium instances, and inferential instances, which can result in up to 50% savings.

• Optimizing for time, specifically time to value, is emphasized as crucial for overall organizational performance. Aligning business and technology strategy, fostering psychological safety, proving hypotheses through rapid experiments, and focusing on well-architected practices are key elements in optimizing for time.

The Transformation to SAS and Data Monetization

• The transformation to SAS (Software as a Service) is a key trend for many organizations, including traditional software companies and non-technology organizations looking to become technology-focused.

• SAS models vary based on customer needs, and organizations should choose the right model based on customer expectations and the frequency of feature updates.

• Data monetization is a crucial aspect of modern business, and organizations need to develop a clear data strategy to capitalize on the data they possess.

• Direct and indirect methods are used for data monetization, with direct methods involving selling or enhancing data, and indirect methods focusing on improving overall efficiency and identifying new opportunities.

• AWS has introduced AWS Data Exchange, a data marketplace that enables organizations to subscribe to or provide third-party data for enhancing their products and services.

• Business modernization involves understanding a business’s differentiators and evolving high-differentiation capabilities while reducing complexity in supporting and generic ideas.

Modernization, Optimization, and Monetization Strategy

• The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding business capabilities and needs in the context of modernization.

• They advocate for the unbundling of the main product into smaller products, moving towards a Software as a Service (SaaS) model.

• A technique called the ‘value chain’ is highlighted, focusing on the stages of visibility to the customer and the evolutionary axis of capabilities and technology.

• The significance of top-down leadership conviction in driving transformations and the need for reskilling and cultural change during modernization is underscored.

• The session concludes with the impact of modernization, optimization, and monetization on fueling innovation, performance improvement, and data strategy for SAS transformation.

Conclusion

Implementing these 10 strategies for modernization, optimization, and monetization on AWS can significantly impact your business’s innovation, performance improvement, and data strategy. Embrace the power of AWS to fuel your business growth and success.

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