AWS Managed Services Provider | 24/7 Ops

## What are AWS Managed Services?

AWS managed services are an outsourced operations model where a third-party AWS Partner handles day-to-day cloud operations on your behalf — 24/7 monitoring, alerting, patching, backup management, security operations, cost optimization, and incident response. Engagements are governed by SLAs and runbooks, with infrastructure-as-code preserved so the customer retains full ownership of every account, resource, and configuration.

## Why Managed Services?

Running production infrastructure on AWS requires more than provisioning resources. It requires ongoing vigilance — monitoring for anomalies, patching vulnerabilities, optimizing costs, managing backups, responding to incidents, and keeping up with the constant stream of new AWS features and best practices.

For most organizations, this operational work is not what differentiates their business. Your competitive advantage comes from the products and services you build, not from your ability to patch Linux kernels or tune CloudWatch alarms. Yet without dedicated operational attention, AWS environments degrade — security gaps emerge, costs drift upward, and technical debt accumulates until it causes real problems.

FactualMinds AWS Managed Services bridges this gap. We operate your AWS infrastructure with the same discipline and expertise as a best-in-class internal platform team — at a fraction of the cost. As an [AWS Select Tier Consulting Partner](/services/), we bring deep operational experience across the full AWS stack.

## What We Manage

### Infrastructure Monitoring and Alerting

We implement and operate comprehensive monitoring across your AWS environment:

- **CloudWatch dashboards** — Real-time visibility into CPU, memory, disk, network, and application metrics for every resource
- **Custom alarms** — Threshold-based and anomaly-detection alarms for critical metrics with appropriate escalation paths
- **Synthetic monitoring** — Periodic health checks on public endpoints to detect availability issues before users do
- **Log monitoring** — CloudWatch Logs Insights queries to detect error patterns, performance degradation, and security anomalies
- **Application Performance Monitoring** — X-Ray tracing for distributed applications to identify latency bottlenecks and errors

When an alarm fires, our team investigates, diagnoses, and resolves the issue — or escalates to your engineering team if the issue requires application-level changes. You receive incident notifications and post-incident reports for every significant event.

### Patch Management

Unpatched systems are the most common attack vector. We manage patching across your fleet:

- **OS patching** — Monthly security patches for Amazon Linux, Ubuntu, Windows Server, and other supported operating systems
- **Runtime updates** — Node.js, Python, Java, .NET, and other runtime upgrades on a tested schedule
- **Container image updates** — Base image rebuilds with latest security patches, pushed to ECR and deployed through your [CI/CD pipeline](/services/devops-pipeline-setup/)
- **Managed service updates** — RDS engine upgrades, ElastiCache version updates, and EKS Kubernetes version upgrades
- **Zero-downtime rollouts** — Rolling deployments, blue/green updates, or maintenance window scheduling to minimize impact

Every patch is tested in non-production environments before production deployment. Critical security patches (CVEs with active exploitation) are fast-tracked with same-day deployment after testing.

### Security Operations

Security is not a one-time setup — it is an ongoing operational practice. We provide:

- **GuardDuty triage** — Review and respond to threat detection findings daily. Investigate suspicious activity, determine if findings are true positives, and remediate threats
- **Security Hub management** — Maintain compliance scores, investigate new findings, and remediate configuration drift
- **WAF rule management** — Tune [AWS WAF rules](/services/aws-cloud-security/) to block emerging threats while minimizing false positives
- **Access reviews** — Quarterly review of IAM users, roles, and permissions to remove unnecessary access
- **Vulnerability management** — Amazon Inspector scans for EC2 instances and ECR container images with remediation tracking
- **Incident response** — Containment, investigation, remediation, and post-incident review for security events

### Cost Optimization

AWS costs require ongoing attention. We deliver:

- **Monthly cost reviews** — Analysis of spending trends, anomalies, and optimization opportunities using [Cost Explorer and CUR data](/services/aws-cloud-cost-optimization-services/)
- **Right-sizing** — Quarterly Compute Optimizer reviews to identify oversized instances, databases, and container resources
- **RI/SP management** — Reserved Instance and Savings Plan portfolio management — purchasing, monitoring utilization, and exchanging convertible RIs as workloads change
- **Waste elimination** — Proactive identification and cleanup of unused resources (unattached EBS volumes, idle load balancers, unused Elastic IPs, orphaned snapshots)
- **Storage optimization** — S3 lifecycle policy management, EBS volume type optimization (gp2 to gp3 migration), and snapshot cleanup

Our managed clients typically see 15-25% cost reduction in the first 6 months and ongoing savings as we continuously optimize.

### Backup and Disaster Recovery

We manage your data protection strategy end to end:

- **Automated backups** — AWS Backup policies for RDS, DynamoDB, EBS, EFS, and S3 with defined retention periods
- **Cross-region replication** — Critical data replicated to a secondary Region for disaster recovery
- **Backup monitoring** — Automated alerts for backup failures with immediate remediation
- **Quarterly DR testing** — We test backup restoration quarterly and document the results, including actual RTO and RPO achieved
- **Runbook maintenance** — Disaster recovery procedures documented, tested, and updated as your environment evolves

### Infrastructure Change Management

When your environment needs to change — new services, scaling events, architecture modifications — we handle it through a controlled process:

- **Change requests** — Submitted via ticketing system with defined scope, impact assessment, and rollback plan
- **Change advisory board** — Significant changes reviewed by senior engineers before implementation
- **Implementation** — Changes deployed during approved windows with monitoring for unintended impact
- **Documentation** — All changes recorded for audit trail and operational knowledge

## Service Tiers

| Capability                | Tier 1 (Standard)           | Tier 2 (Premium)              |
| ------------------------- | --------------------------- | ----------------------------- |
| Monitoring & alerting     | 24/7 automated              | 24/7 automated + human review |
| Incident response         | Business hours (8am-8pm ET) | 24/7                          |
| Critical incident SLA     | 1 hour                      | 15 minutes                    |
| Patching                  | Monthly                     | Monthly + critical fast-track |
| Security operations       | Weekly review               | Daily review                  |
| Cost optimization         | Quarterly review            | Monthly review                |
| DR testing                | Annual                      | Quarterly                     |
| Architecture advisory     | On request                  | Monthly review sessions       |
| Dedicated account manager | No                          | Yes                           |

## How We Work

### Onboarding (Weeks 1-3)

1. **Access setup** — Cross-account IAM roles with least-privilege access and CloudTrail logging
2. **Environment assessment** — Full inventory of resources, configurations, and current operational state
3. **Baseline monitoring** — Deploy CloudWatch dashboards, alarms, and log queries tailored to your environment
4. **Documentation** — Create runbooks for common operational tasks and incident response procedures
5. **Handoff** — Transition operational responsibilities with clear escalation paths

### Ongoing Operations

- **Daily:** Monitor dashboards, triage alerts, respond to incidents, review security findings
- **Weekly:** Review tickets, update documentation, security operations review
- **Monthly:** Cost optimization review, patching cycle, performance analysis, management report
- **Quarterly:** [DR testing](/blog/aws-backup-strategies-automated-data-protection/), access review, architecture review, RI/SP evaluation

### Reporting

You receive monthly operational reports covering:

- Incident summary (count, severity, resolution time)
- Availability metrics for critical services
- Security posture (findings opened, resolved, outstanding)
- Cost analysis (month-over-month trends, optimization savings)
- Patch compliance status
- Upcoming recommendations

## The Build vs. Buy Decision

Building an internal platform or SRE team to manage your AWS environment requires:

| Cost Factor                          | Internal Team                   | FactualMinds Managed |
| ------------------------------------ | ------------------------------- | -------------------- |
| Engineers (2-3 minimum for coverage) | $400,000-600,000/year           | Included             |
| Tooling (monitoring, ITSM, security) | $20,000-50,000/year             | Included             |
| Training and certifications          | $10,000-20,000/year             | Included             |
| On-call compensation                 | $15,000-30,000/year             | Included             |
| Hiring time                          | 3-6 months                      | Immediate            |
| Knowledge continuity risk            | High (single points of failure) | Low (team-based)     |

For organizations with fewer than 50 engineers, building a dedicated platform team is rarely cost-effective. Our managed services provide equivalent coverage at 30-50% of the cost.

For organizations with large engineering teams, managed services complement internal capabilities — our team handles the operational baseline while your engineers focus on platform innovation and developer experience.

## Who Benefits Most

- **Startups (10-50 employees)** — Cannot justify dedicated infrastructure engineers but need production-grade operations. Managed services provide enterprise-level operations from day one.
- **Mid-market companies (50-500 employees)** — Have some AWS skills internally but lack the depth or coverage for 24/7 operations. Managed services fill the gaps.
- **Enterprises** — Use managed services for specific workloads or environments while internal teams focus on strategic projects.
- **Post-migration organizations** — After [migrating to AWS](/services/aws-migration/), managed services ensure ongoing operational excellence without building a new team.

## Getting Started

We start every managed services engagement with a 2-week onboarding assessment — understanding your environment, identifying immediate risks, and establishing monitoring and operational baselines. There are no long-term contracts required; we earn your continued business through operational excellence.

Complement your managed services engagement with a [FinOps Consulting](/services/finops-consulting/) retainer for deeper cloud cost governance, or start with a free [AWS Well-Architected Review](/services/aws-architecture-review/) to baseline your current architecture health before onboarding.

[Book a Free Infrastructure Review →](/contact-us/)