The cloud market is continuously expanding as more businesses are making a swift move to cloud-native frameworks. Among all the key competitors in the global cloud market, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is known for its robust, highly reliable, and well-secured cloud computing framework.
AWS cloud services alone comprised 33% of the global market share in Q1 2022 due to AWS’s high-value products. These promising figures reflect the importance of AWS cloud services that revolutionized how organizations deploy and access their business-critical applications & data. While choosing AWS services, businesses can choose from AWS fully-managed services vs. unmanaged.
In a nutshell, fully managed services like Amazon RDS & Amazon DynamoDB offer a seamless and streamlined approach to managing your resources on the cloud as AWS handles and manages all the routine administration, maintenance, and upgrades. The security in AWS is a shared responsibility as clients have to ensure the implementation of integrated security measures to extend the efficacy of infrastructure security & compliance. Unmanaged services provide the flexibility to manage your virtual machines (VMs) and operating systems (OS).
This blog post will help you explore the differences between AWS fully-managed services vs. unmanaged services to find the exemplary service tailored to your needs. Let’s discuss this in detail.
AWS Fully-Managed Services
AWS fully-managed services are Amazon’s cloud computing provisions. AWS handles the entire infrastructure and manages the required resources to deliver reliable service. AWS manages the servers, storage, OS, databases, and other critical resources fundamental to service infrastructure. It enables client organizations to focus on their core business processes and applications without worrying about management and configuration. Whereas security is a shared responsibility of AWS and client organizations. It means your responsibilities to manage the infrastructure security vary based on your subscription choice and associated regulations. At the same time, AWS’s “shared responsibility” model offers greater flexibility and control over deployment.
In some instances, you can configure AWS managed service and be able to define underlying EC2 instances. An Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instance is a virtual server to deploy applications on the AWS cloud. For instance, in AWS RDS (Relational Database Services), you can configure and define EC2 specifications while launching a new database instance.
There is a commonly understood myth that managed services entirely handicapped the users by completely restricting control. Although you can’t manage underlying resources such as VMs and OS, you can still control the resource itself. For instance, users can practice comprehensive control over their database instances using the DB Parameter Group.
Target Organizations
Enterprises of all scales, specifically SMBs with a tight IT budget and enterprise-scale organizations looking to gain operational efficiency, can leverage AWS fully managed services. It allows organizations to focus on core business activities, embrace agility, and reduce time to market. Relying on AWS-managed IT support services includes infrastructure management, configurations, shared security, data backups, and operations. AWS fully-managed services follow strict compliance with industry regulations to ensure strict scrutiny and security of the infrastructure.
Pricing Structure
AWS fully-managed services pricing is based on a pay-as-you-go model. The pricing involves billing customers only the allocated resources and the number of active users. With the AWS pricing calculator, you can find the accurate estimate for fully-managed services per your required resources and number of templates.
AWS Self-Managed Services
AWS unmanaged or self-managed services refer to an Amazon cloud service where the customer is liable for managing all aspects of the service, including provisioning, configuration, security, upsizing & downsizing of resources, and upgrading the underlying infrastructure and deployed applications. It involves choosing the suitable EC2 instance and running all required services, managing Kubernetes clusters, or configuring a custom DB instance on the virtual machines. It requires a professional IT team or outsourcing to services providers having in-depth technical knowledge and industry experience to manage and maintain the entire infrastructure.
The client organization is responsible for ensuring infrastructure security, maintaining the OS, resources, & applications, scheduling data backups, and formulating disaster recovery plans. It involves configuring and maintaining high availability, fault tolerance, and strict monitoring to respond to unexpected errors, bugs, or cyber threats.
Target Organizations
The AWS self-managed services’ target segment is usually enterprise-grade organizations with a dedicated team of IT professionals, cybersecurity experts, and cloud developers. The AWS self-managed services come with rich control over the entire cloud framework and high flexibility, allowing businesses to customize and fine-tune their infrastructure to address their particular needs. The in-house IT teams are responsible for configuring and monitoring VMs, OS, and tech stack to align resources with their specialized requirements.
Pricing Structure
You can explore a range of services, including serverless computing, training and deploying Machine Learning instances, container orchestration, scalable storage, processing, applications deployment & provisioning, etc. You can also find your estimate with the AWS pricing calculator for your required self-managed services.
AWS Fully-Managed Services vs. Unmanaged Services -Key Differences
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AWS Managed Services vs. Unmanaged Services – Which Works Best For Your Business?
Choosing the right option from AWS fully-managed vs. unmanaged services is vital for businesses of all scales. Whether managed or unmanaged services work best for you depends on your specific needs and resources.
If you are a small or mid-sized business (SMB) that lacks an in-house IT team and technical resources, opting for AWS fully-managed services is recommended. It allows you to focus on core business areas without getting into the nitty-gritty of managing and configuring the cloud infrastructure. However, managed services can be more expensive than unmanaged services, and you may have less control over your infrastructure.
Whereas for enterprise-grade organizations with in-house IT teams and more complex IT needs, AWS unmanaged or self-managed services can give them rich control over VM instances, applications, and OS. However, unmanaged services require more effort and expertise to manage, and you may need to take care of tasks such as backups, monitoring, and patching yourself.
Yes, AWS and its WorkSpaces are no longer the best choice due to their complexity and high costs. In comparison, V2 Cloud is Amazon WorkSpaces alternative that specializes in virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and remote desktop solutions. It can help organizations by providing a secure, scalable, and easy-to-use platform for accessing virtual desktops and applications from anywhere, on any device. Most importantly, V2 Cloud combines the benefits of both AWS managed and unmanaged services, while avoiding the drawbacks of each.
It provides a fully-managed infrastructure, taking care of maintenance, security, backups, and other tasks with no need of any expertise or in-depth IT training . This means that organizations don’t have to worry about managing the underlying infrastructure, freeing up time and resources for other tasks. On the other hand, V2 Cloud also provides a high degree of control and flexibility over the virtual desktops and applications. Organizations can customize their environments and install their own software, without having to worry about compatibility issues or restrictions. The users can scale up or down based on the organization’s needs, without having to worry about hardware or infrastructure limitations.
If you want to find the best of both worlds with high flexibility & control, enterprise-grade infrastructure security, and reliable cloud services, explore V2 Cloud today.
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