Managed Services in the Cloud

01 - The challenge

01

The challenge

Although AWS platform offers a wide range of managed services, the level of responsibility for operating each of the services varies, based on the AWS Shared Responsibility model.

Depending on designing and implementing your AWS solution from IaaS components, or relying on PaaS, SaaS and serverless services where AWS takes more of the heavy lifting in terms of operating the IT services, there is always a certain part which belongs to the customer to take care of. These activities require expert AWS skills to make sure that technicians choose the right AWS service, configuration and pricing model, and can react proactively on time to keep business applications up as per requirements, and to keep the AWS solution optimally running. Often, there is a knowledge and process gap here between AWS and customer services and responsibilities. 

tc2_shared_responsbility

Here at TC2, we offer our AWS operation and support services to address and tackle this gap, in order to keep everything running smoothly with great end user experience, at the best achievable cost. 

In order to maximise the benefits of the cloud and have an efficient environment in all aspects, the cloud platform needs to be constantly “tuned”, because unlike on-prem environments, Cloud environments have a constantly evolving lifecycle journey. 

02 - The solution

02

The solution

What TC2 can offer 

Operating your AWS workloads 

Monitoring and alerting workloads: setting up meaningful alerts on AWS infrastructure metrics is key to understand what is going on. We provide a standard set of metrics, alerts and thresholds based on years of operational experience and expertise, which will be fine tuned regularly through the lifecycle of your AWS workloads. Alerts can be directed towards TC2 (level 1 monitoring) or directly to customer (TC2 is level 2 monitoring in this case). 

Proactive issue detection and resolution: based on fine tuned alert notifications, TC2 oncall team receives notifications 24/7 (if TC2 is level 1 monitoring) to investigate, troubleshoot and resolve issues anytime during the year, aiming to get notified prior end user experience suffers. In case no customer consent is required to perform a fix, or it is a breaking issue, TC2 will proactively fix the AWS resource configuration before the issue or problem happens. 

Patching, updating and upgrading: by time to time it is required to update or patch certain components, no matter if it is IaaS or PaaS component on AWS platform. We take care about the upgrade and patching process of EC2 operating systems, RDS engines, Lambda runtimes and anything to be done or fixed coming via AWS Health. TC2 takes care of the AWS platform components, while customer is required to cooperate in these activities supporting the application side of updates and patching. 

Finops: TC2 will perform cost optimization reviews multiple times a year, to make sure all resources are sized correctly, runs with reserved capacity if approved by business, and has no idle resources. 

Security and operational reviews: TC2 will perform cost and operational reviews during the year, to make sure no known security and operational issues are present in the maintained systems. 

Well architected reviews: TC2 will perform workshops to interview key stakeholders from customer technical and business teams to make sure the designed solution meets the business needs, and that the organization can use the AWS platform with maximum benefits. 

Compliance reviews for industry standard frameworks: TC2 will perform audit reviews in case of customer enquiries for industry standard frameworks like SOC2, CIS, PCI DSS, etc. 

 

Supporting your AWS workloads 

Service desk: portal access for our customers to report any issues or requests to us, and also feedback to us on our quality of our services. We have a team of AWS certified, english speaker European experts to deal with any AWS platform related issues based on provided SLAs. 

24/7 oncall service: telephone contact to our oncall team of AWS certified, english speaker European experts to deal with any AWS platform related issues based on provided SLAs. 

Incident and problem management: providing details of an issue or a problem instantly grabs our attention. You can add details, severity, and extra information about the issue or problem to be solved, to make sure the fastest resolution time on our end. 

Service request management: in case you need to add, modify or reconfigure something in your AWS account which you would like TC2’s expert team to deal with, it is possible through our portal. 

Change management and consulting: whether there are changes of a larger scope or you don’t know how to proceed for a business requirement, get in touch with us via our portal and we will make sure to consult with you with the relevant expertise. 

 

Support and operations plans 

TC2 offers four plans with a variety of activities, SLAs, availability and services. 

  • Basic 
  • Standard 
  • Advanced 
  • Enterprise 

Get in touch with us to get our detailed plans! 

 

Supporting tools and accreditations 

TC2 has built on AWS and Atlassian tools, designed the workflows and processes based on ITIL. 

TC2 has ISO9001 and ISO27001 certifications to make sure quality and security of the operation and support is priority one.