Microsoft began familiarizing customers with its Azure Well-Architected Frameworkin 2020 in order to help customers design and build secure, scalable, high-performing solutions in Azure and to effectively and consistently optimize workloads. As I outlined in my Annual Performance Review blog post back in June, the Azure Well-Architected Framework is divided into five pillars of architectural best practices:
- Cost Management
- Operational Excellence
- Performance Efficiency
- Reliability
- Security
Once a Well-Architected Framework has been established, Microsoft encourages Azure customers to keep their cloud environments finely tuned by having periodic reviews performed against Azure best practices as well as specific business priorities in their cloud journey.
In August, Microsoft started offering Well-Architected Framework Technical Workshops for qualifying Azure customers. Each of the workshops in the series focuses on a different best practice pillar. It is recommended that reviews be performed quarterly, however Microsoft offers eligible customers fully funded workshops once a year.
How it Works
As a Microsoft Gold Cloud Platform Partner, Lightstream has deep Azure knowledge and is certified to help assess and analyze your architecture with Azure’s Well-Architected Review tool to identify risks.
Workshops begin with an evaluation of that specific aspect of your cloud environment – i.e., operational excellence, performance efficiency, reliability or security, depending on the workshop. As you complete the assessment, you’re provided a score for each pillar that you chose to evaluate and an aggregate score across the entire workload. Then we’ll advise what actions should be taken for optimization and create a plan to implement the prioritized, and funded recommendations.
It’s not uncommon for overworked and understaffed business leaders and IT professionals to put off performing Well-Architected Reviews. They think, everything is running smoothly so why try to fix something that isn’t broken? But the truth is, no matter how well your environment seems to be performing or how much you’ve managed to improve processes and increase your organization’s efficiency, you have the opportunity to do it even better.
The bottom line is this: you have a duty to correct misconfigurations and proactively avert security threats and financial and operational inefficiencies. And between new instances, changing security groups and updated service offerings, you must make sure that your organization is maximizing every opportunity for savings and automation. The longer you put off Well-Architected Reviews, the greater your organization’s vulnerability is to cybersecurity attacks and getting bypassed by your competition.
Contact Lightstream to find out how Well-Architected Framework Technical Workshops can optimize and update your Azure cloud environment, ultimately helping your organization to cut costs, increase revenue, ensure compliance, go to market faster and increase the quality of your products and services.
