AWS Well-Architected Review for ISVs
Enabling AWS Partners to identify risks and make improvements to your architecture
What is the AWS Well-Architected Review for ISVs?
The AWS Well-Architected Review helps Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) adopt AWS best practices to lower costs, drive better security and performance, adopt cloud-native architectures, drive industry compliance, and scale to meet traffic demands.
There are several review mechanisms available to conduct the AWS Well-Architected Review and meet the AWS foundational bar. Conducting an AWS Well-Architected Review with the Foundational Technical Review (FTR) lens enables you to identify and remediate risks in your workloads. You can earn a "Reviewed by AWS" solutions badge upon successful completion of FTR to promote your solutions to AWS customers. Additionally, you can also leverage the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Lens to adopt best practices for developing and optimizing SaaS workloads.
Discover benefits of AWS Well-Architected Review, how to conduct a review, resources, and partner success stories below.
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Benefits of Conducting an AWS Well-Architected Review
Scale your solutions
Receive guidance to improve and optimize your workloads and applications with AWS best practices across operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization to ensure products are optimized to scale over time.
Drive cost efficiencies
Identify and mitigate risks in your applications to create cost savings and reduce the likelihood of security incidents, application outages, rapidly increasing costs, and performance issues.
Earn “Reviewed by AWS” solution badge
Leverage AWS Well-Architected best practices to streamline the process of completing an FTR. Earn a “Reviewed by AWS” solutions badge upon passing the FTR to promote your solutions to AWS customers.
How to Conduct an AWS Well-Architected Review
All ISVs at any stage of cloud adoption should conduct AWS Well-Architected Reviews to ensure your applications follow AWS best practices. AWS Partners gain instant access to the AWS Well-Architected resources in AWS Partner Central upon registering with the AWS Partner Network (APN). Follow the steps below to conduct an AWS Well-Architected Review.
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Step 1: Join the AWS ISV Partner Path
If you haven’t already registered your company with the APN, join the APN by creating your AWS Partner Central Account.
- As you register with the APN, be sure to indicate that you have a solution that runs or is integrated with AWS to gain instant access to AWS ISV Partner Path through AWS Partner Central
- Upon joining the AWS ISV Partner Path, start your journey with the APN Navigate Track for ISVs to receive step-by-step guidance on how to build products using the AWS Well-Architected Framework
- As you register with the APN, be sure to indicate that you have a solution that runs or is integrated with AWS to gain instant access to AWS ISV Partner Path through AWS Partner Central
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Step 2: Conduct an AWS Well-Architected Review
The APN Navigate track for ISVs will guide you to conduct an AWS Well-Architected review to ensure you follow AWS best practices and remediate risks in workloads required to successfully complete the AWS Foundational Technical Review.
You can conduct an AWS Well-Architected Review by leveraging any of the four mechanisms depending on your team size and budget:
- Self-Service Review: This is a self-assessment mechanism for you to understand improvements that you need to make to mitigate risks and complete the FTR. Your team’s technical and business leads can conduct this type of review using the AWS Well-Architected Tool with the FTR Lens in the AWS Management Console
- AWS Consulting Partner-led review: Team with an Authorized AWS Well-Architected Consulting Partner to perform Well-Architected Reviews. Authorized AWS Well-Architected Consulting Partners have expertise in performing workload reviews and making improvements based on high risk issues (HRIs) discovered during the review. Working with an AWS Well-Architected Partner to conduct a review and remediate 25% of discovered HRIs, may qualify you for AWS Promotional Credits. Find authorized AWS Well-Architected Consulting Partners »
- Review with Well-Architected Solutions from AWS Partners: Leverage Well-Architected Solutions from AWS Partners to automate the discovery and identification of risks in your workloads. These solutions are integrated with the AWS Well-Architected tool, enabling you to streamline and automate the review process. Explore Well-Architected Partner Solutions »
- AWS Solutions Architect-led Review: If you have a dedicated AWS Solutions Architect assigned to you, they can perform AWS Well-Architected Reviews leveraging the FTR Lens to identify issues that need to be resolved by your team
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Step 3: Remediate Workload Risks
Based on the results of the AWS Well-Architected Review, we recommend you develop an improvement plan aligned with your company’s priorities.
- The AWS Well-Architected Tool will provide you with steps for improving various issues that exist in your workloads based on AWS best practices
- If you have leveraged the FTR lens to conduct the AWS Well-Architected Review, you will be provided with a list of risks to remediate, prioritized based on factors that are critical to customer success and required to successfully complete the FTR
- Additional high risks that appear in the AWS Well-Architected Review should be prioritized based on your business priorities and those that are required to complete the FTR
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Step 4: Apply for an AWS Foundational Technical Review
Once you have resolved high risk issues from the AWS Well-Architected Review, request an AWS Foundational Technical Review with an AWS Partner Solutions Architect.
- Upon successfully completing the FTR and having paid the annual APN fee ($2,500), you will earn the “Reviewed by AWS” solution badge to showcase on marketing materials
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Step 5: Apply for Well-Architected ISV Funding
Once you have conducted an AWS Well-Architected Review in the AWS Well-Architected Tool, successfully remediated 25% of high-risk issues you discovered during the review, and successfully completed the AWS Foundational Technical Review, you are eligible to receive AWS Promotional Credits.
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Step 6: Continue to Optimize Your Solution
The AWS Well-Architected is a mechanism for ongoing improvements. Follow guidance below to continuously optimize and modernize your solutions on AWS.
- Continue to leverage either of the four mechanisms in Step 2 to conduct an AWS Well-Architected Review on an ongoing basis
- We recommend conducting an AWS Well-Architected Review when you make a major update, launch a new solution, and on a regular cadence to make sure you are following the latest architectural guidance
- Accelerate delivery of your SaaS solutions on AWS by leveraging the SaaS Lens in the AWS Well-Architected Tool. Receive prescriptive guidance from AWS SaaS experts on how to build or optimize multi-tenant SaaS solutions on AWS. Learn more about the value of modernizing solutions to SaaS »
Team up with an AWS Partner to conduct an AWS Well-Architected Review
AWS Well-Architected Resources for ISVs
Explore resources available to help you adopt AWS Well-Architected Framework as a mechanism for continuous optimization.
Whitepapers
Dive into the Well-Architected Whitepapers to learn about the key concepts, design principles, and architectural best practices for designing and running workloads in the cloud.
Hands-on Labs
Leverage hands-on labs to learn how to implement designs that scale with your application needs and help you build using architectural best practices.
APN Blog Posts
Learn how to incorporate AWS Well-Architected into your business, prioritizing HRIs, and more.
AWS Well-Architected Tool
Learn how you can conduct AWS Well-Architected Reviews in the AWS Well-Architected Tool today.
Webinars
Learn more about the AWS Well-Architected Review for ISVs with the following webinar demos: FTR Lens, SaaS Lens, and Well-Architected Tool Solutions.
AWS Well-Architected Success Stories
Burns & McDonnell
Personetics
Continuity Software
Verdant Technology
Through the Well-Architected Review and Remediation, Verdant reduced their due diligence process with client prospects by 50%, shortened sales cycles, improved their return on capital investments, increased client scalability opportunities by 1,000%, and reduced AWS hosting costs by 50%.
TIBCO
When TIBCO Software launched an analytics app to track the spread and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in real-time, they leveraged the AWS Well-Architected best practices to develop a highly available TIBCO Spotfire Implementation to handle spikes in volume.
Trend Micro-Conformity
Zaloni
Zaloni customers want the best deployment and security model. By leveraging Well-Architected, they were able to drive efficiencies to help customers respond faster to market opportunities discovered by their self-service data platform.
