Modern cloud environments evolve rapidly. Teams change, priorities shift, and documentation often falls by the wayside
That’s how many businesses end up with messy, undocumented AWS estates – and no idea what’s running, how it’s configured, or what it’s costing them.
“Clients often come to us not knowing what they have in their cloud,” says Clayton York, cloud architect at BBD. “There’s no documentation, no diagrams – and no real understanding of how everything hangs together.” To assist in cases such as this, BBD has developed the Cloud Architecture Assessment – a rapid, human-led deep dive into your AWS environment to surface risks, costs, and opportunities.
Gain clarity on your cloud
When you’re managing cloud estates without a clear picture of the underlying architecture, you’re vulnerable to security risks, cost overruns, and operational headaches.
Automated tools like AWS Trusted Advisor and Security Hub can flag surface-level issues, but they can’t paint the bigger picture or contextualise what those findings mean. “These tools are certainly still crucial to have in place and will be part of what we look for in our assessment,” says York: “But we find they do lack certain functions that the human element can provide. For example, the ability to identify if a less an ideal ingress network architecture has been deployed in certain cases and making recommendations on how to improve this by making a network re-architecture recommendation.”
The BBD approach: People-led, not just tool driven
While having an experienced and skilled cloud team in-house is ideal, these resources come at a high cost to the company. York explains that an affordable alternative is to engage an AWS partner with the expertise to get it right from the start—and then maintain a long-term relationship to ensure standards are upheld for all future buildouts. This is exactly what our BBD cloud managed services team does for multiple customers.
However, in cases where this hasn’t happened, BBD’s Cloud Architecture Assessment could be an excellent fit. The assessment is tool-agnostic and people-led, run over a few days by a seasoned cloud architect who manually maps and evaluates your AWS environment. “We go in and manually figure out how everything works. We check your networking, security, infrastructure cost optimisations, infrastructure-as-code – and then hand you a full report with a proper architecture diagram and specific recommendations,” he explains.
The process includes:
- Visual architecture mapping: Particularly useful when no diagrams exist
- Manual inspection of infrastructure, security, and networking: Uncovers any misconfigurations or bottlenecks
- Drift detection: Comparing live state with IaC to spot inconsistencies
- Security: Identifying critical flaws like misconfigured security groups and missing best-practice security services
- Cost optimisation: Identifying areas to cut costs, provided by AWS savings plans and rightsizing to eliminating running under-utilised resources.
In one recent case, BBD helped identify multiple underutilised resources – which could be turned off or consolidated, saving the client $2000 a month. In another, a misconfigured security group left parts of the system unnecessarily exposed. “We don’t just hand you a pile of logs or tool reports – we interpret it, prioritise the findings, and give you something actionable,” says York.
Real impact, fast
The assessment wraps up with report tailored to both technical and business stakeholders. “This helps new teams get up to speed fast, or gives business leaders clarity when they’re planning the next move,” says York. “It’s like a cloud sanity check.”
While there are tools that scan your cloud, few can interpret it like an experienced AWS architect. This isn’t a generic audit or another automated scan. It’s a focused, context-rich engagement with seasoned cloud experts who’ve seen it all. BBD’s team has designed and built out dozens of AWS architectures, so you get real, experience-backed advice.
“There are so many ways to build in AWS. Having someone who’s done it before, at scale, can be the difference between a smart design and a costly mistake.”
Whether you’re planning a migration, cleaning up technical debt, or just inheriting an unfamiliar AWS setup, get in touch with a BBD cloud expert today, or find out about some of our cloud consulting services now.
