Guide
What does an AWS consulting partner do?
A plain-language explainer: what the work covers, when you need a partner, how it differs from doing it yourself or hiring a managed service provider, and what to ask before you hire one.
- Plain language
- When you need one
- Questions to ask
Quick answer
They design, move, secure and run your AWS environment.
An AWS consulting partner is a firm that helps you design, migrate to, secure and operate workloads on Amazon Web Services. A good one does four things: plans an architecture that fits your business, moves existing systems with as little disruption as possible, sets up security and cost controls from the start, and then either hands over cleanly or keeps running the environment for you.
AWS runs a partner network that recognizes firms working on its platform. That tells you a firm works with AWS. How it scopes, documents and supports your environment tells you whether it is the right one for you.
What the work covers
The six parts of an AWS engagement.
Architecture and landing zone
Accounts, identity, networking, logging and guardrails set up before any workload arrives, so everything that follows starts secure.
Migration
Moving servers, applications and data to AWS in planned waves, each with a cutover plan, validation and a way back.
Security and governance
Least privilege access, encryption, logging, and the controls an auditor or a regulated customer will ask about.
Cost control
Tagging, budgets and alerts, right sizing and commitments, so the monthly bill is predictable and explainable.
DevOps and automation
Infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines and monitoring, so environments are repeatable and changes are safe.
Ongoing operations
Monitoring, patching, backups and incident response after go-live, either by your team with runbooks or by the partner as a managed service.
When you need one
Signs it is time to bring in a partner.
You are moving off aging servers or a data center and want it done once, properly
The AWS bill keeps growing and nobody can explain why
A security review, audit or large customer is about to ask how your cloud is controlled
Outages happen and it is unclear who owns the fix
Your team builds software well but does not have deep AWS operations experience
You are launching a product that has to scale and stay up from day one
Your options
Doing it yourself, a consulting partner, or a managed service.
These are not exclusive. Many teams use a partner for the design and migration, then decide who runs it afterwards.
Doing it yourself
Works when your team already has AWS architecture, security and operations experience and the time to apply it.
A consulting partner
Brings that experience for a defined project such as a migration, a landing zone or a security and cost review, then hands over.
Before you hire
Questions to ask an AWS consulting partner.
Who will own the AWS accounts?
Agree this first. Many businesses want everything in accounts they own, with the partner given least privilege access that can be removed at any time.
How will you keep downtime low during migration?
Look for planned waves, data synchronization where needed, validation before traffic switches and a rollback path for each wave.
How will you control cost?
Ask for a cost baseline before any change, tagging and budgets from the start, and regular right sizing once real usage is known.
What do we get at handover?
Architecture documentation, infrastructure as code, runbooks and a walkthrough with your team, so nothing depends on one person.
Can you run it after go-live?
Some partners stop at handover; others offer managed operations. Decide which you want before you sign.
Do you work beyond AWS?
If part of your estate is on Azure, Google Cloud or on premises, ask how the partner handles hybrid and multi-cloud setups.
Talk to us about AWS.
Tell us what you run today and what you want to change. We will recommend a clear starting point, whether that is a readiness review, a migration or managed operations.