What Is an AWS CAF? An Overview of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework

Many companies use Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a reliable and cost-effective cloud computing services provider. Indeed, not many vendors can provide the same level of flexibility and security as Amazon. Moreover, some AWS features are completely unique (for example, an ability to deploy servers directly from CLI).

Read on to learn about what is AWS CAF and the role of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework in enterprise software deployment.

What Is an AWS CAF?

Let’s start with an overview of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework from several definitions.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) gives you instant access to your web services from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Leveraging this highly scalable platform enables companies to deploy applications in minutes. At the same time, the created solutions can be centrally reconfigured, updated, and deactivated (both temporarily and permanently in order to optimize the company's costs). In this case, you will always pay only for the resources that you use.

In turn, the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) provides a comprehensive list of recommendations for implementing, adapting, configuring, and maintaining workflows associated with already deployed software. Thousands of enterprises leverage AWS CAF today, and more plan to use them soon to migrate to the cloud.

With the help of AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF), organizations can build a road map to cloud migration, quickly bridge in-house IT knowledge gaps and deploy software in different environments.

Note that the guide, compiled within the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework, affects absolutely all departments of the company — from IT specialists to human resources. This systematic approach helps to complete the migration process with minimal downtime, to an already prepared environment, with already trained employees.

You can also check out the Amazon whitepaper which details the main aspects of entering the cloud.

AWS Cloud Adoption Framework Overview: Main Phases

Let's see what phases AWS Professional Services Cloud Adoption Framework includes.

Envision

At this stage, you will be able to build a competent strategy for AWS cloud migration, the implementation of which will require a minimum of time and money investment. You can also build long-term prospects for your business by choosing the optimal technology stack.

Align

This stage involves drawing up a clear action plan which, in addition to precisely describing the steps for cloud migration, will determine the specific benefits for your business. This will help you estimate all the risks associated with the moving process and choose the most effective approach for its implementation.

Launch

This phase of AWS CAF helps you build the workflows needed to deploy cloud services and add value to your business. As a result, you can quickly integrate new web services into your existing network infrastructure and benefit from them immediately after deployment.

Realize Value

This phase involves evaluating the effectiveness of innovations and planning a further strategy for your business. With its help, you can regularly compare the results of the updated workflows with the expected plans and adjust the chosen strategy.

AWS Cloud Adoption Framework Perspectives

Each AWS CAF Perspective is a list of responsibilities that specific employees in the company must perform. In essence, it is the standard that defines the safety and cost-effectiveness of migrating to the Amazon cloud.

Let’s study the main AWS Cloud Adoption Framework security perspectives in detail.

Business Perspective

Rather than developing particular plans to achieve particular business benefits, with the implementation of AWS Cloud Adoption Framework you can build a global business model with a long-term perspective to grow and adapt to changing market demands. This perspective will benefit managers and business owners with:

• providing great planning opportunities;
• maximizing the satisfaction of the end-user needs;
• optimization of finances distribution;
• end-to-end control of business risks, both external and strategic.

Governance Perspective

This perspective helps in organizing and coordinating software and business processes outside of IT. It is helpful for IT managers, architects, and business analysts due to:

• scheduling cloud workloads and properly prioritizing services;
• choosing the right cloud migration methodologies;
• cost optimization;
• licenses management.

Operations Perspective

This perspective of Cloud Adoption Framework AWS helps in managing workloads according to current and future business needs. As a result, you can quickly plan and implement a new business strategy with minimal risk. This phase is crucial for tech support operators who benefit from the following:

• service monitoring for getting assess the level of efficiency of IT operations and providing compliance with corporate requirements for operating software in the cloud;
• resource inventory management to rationalize the use of virtual IT assets;
• release/change management for intelligent selection of continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) methods;
• reporting and analytics for performance monitoring;
• creating backups and downtime assessment for continuous business processes.

Security Perspective

AWS Cloud Adoption Framework security perspectives provide the recommendations for the right structure for management points and help reduce IT workloads for the Network Security team. Here are the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework security benefits they get:

• Identity and Access Management (IAM), which provides extensive guidance on integrating AWS into user authentication and authorization processes;
• Detective control, which is responsible for detecting suspicious network activity;
• Infrastructure security, responsible for drafting regulations and security requirements;
• Data protection, which helps you develop correct strategies to protect data during transfer and storage processes;
• Incident response service that helps you instantly respond to abnormal network activity.

Learn more AWS security best practices

People Perspective

This perspective helps HR specialists prepare the staff for the journey to the cloud. In particular, HR specialists receive:

• the ability to predict new vacancies due to the modernized network architecture;
• creating a common list of skills for cloud migration;
• building a training plan for employees to carry out their usual tasks in an updated environment.

Platform Perspective

The platform perspective serves to enhance the network infrastructure built with AWS. It plays a key role for network architects, CTOs, and managing members of the IT team. Here are the benefits they get:

• understanding what requirements the design of the future system should meet;
• the vision of prospects for scaling and building new workflows in the cloud;
• aligning new business goals in the context of new computing power offered by the cloud.

What to Do After?

After realizing all six perspectives, you will need to:

• determine who in your company is responsible for the implementation of cloud technologies (chief specialists);
• define questions and concerns that can complicate cloud adoption;
• make a list of skills and tasks needed to improve the implementation process;
• create an action plan to close knowledge or workflow gaps.

Our Experience

For several years we have specialized in the development and implementation of serverless solutions based on AWS tools such as AWS Lambda, API Gateway, AWS DynamoDB, AWS Step Functions, and more, providing our clients with cost-effective, scalable, and reliable products.

Our experts can offer you, depending on your needs, deploying both a traditional cloud application based on AWS EC2 (EC2 is a virtual hosting, which helps to launch a new server within 5 minutes) and a serverless application based on AWS Lambda, so you can focus on writing code that serves your customers.

The most obvious economic benefit of these deployments is that you can run your application in the cloud at low cost. You use an existing Amazon account, and within an hour, you get server power at your disposal. At the same time, you will pay only for those servers that will be launched and only for those disk drives that will be used. As a result, the budget required to launch your startup will be minimal.

As for security, we use high-reliable services such as AWS WAF, AWS Shield, AWS Cognito, etc. We integrate cloud services with HPC, IoT, Blockchain, or ML solutions as needed using AWS IoT Core for maximum security and scalability.

We also use Elastic Load Balancing, Availability Zones, Database Replication, and Auto Scaling Groups — in anything that will provide resiliency and uninterrupted access to web services for your users.

And, of course, we always care about the economic benefits of cloud migration — you pay only for the resources you use.

To get more info, we also recommend that you study our cases, such as Elements.cloud, Acorn-i, and Etergo.

Conclusion

As you can see from our AWS Cloud Adoption Framework overview, using this tool is an obligatory attribute of a competent cloud migration, which could be your guide for the journey in the Amazon cloud technologies world. It is also rational to use CAF because it focuses attention immediately on many aspects of cloud implementation, not just technical ones (which is usually the simplest of the whole complex of issues).If you would like to learn more about AWS or decide to migrate to the cloud, contact TechMagic. Our certified experts who have already implemented cloud environments for hundreds of businesses worldwide are now happy to take care of your project and use the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework to build your cloud action plan.