TABLE OF CONTENTS


Service Offering Overview

1. What is Ingram Micro Cloud’s AWS Well-Architected Services offering?

Ingram Micro AWS Well-Architected Service is designed by certified AWS Solution Architects to build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure for their applications and workloads. Based on five pillars — operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization — AWS Well-Architected provides a consistent approach for customers and partners to evaluate architectures and implement designs that can scale over time.


2. What is the intent of Ingram Micro Cloud’s AWS Well-Architected Services Program?

To enable our Partners to build secure, high performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure for their customer workloads by integrating Well-Architected as a mechanism to govern architectural decisions and compare workloads against AWS best practices.


3. What does Ingram Micro Cloud’s AWS Well-Architected Services include?

Our program offering includes two packages: Standard and Premium.

  • Standard package is a complimentary AWS Well-Architected Assessment Review for Ingram Micro qualified customers. The main objective of the review is to provide a clear understanding of the state of AWS workloads mapped against AWS design principles and best practices. At the end of the two-week assessment, our certified AWS solution architects will generate a report which will include remediation recommendations to mitigate risk and improve their workloads. This review will be a combination of a discovery meetings, interviews with key stakeholders and data analysis. It will conclude with the presentation and delivery of a full Well-Architected Review report.
  • Premium package is a Remediation service for customers who have completed the complimentary Assessment Review and would like to remediate the identified High-Risk Issues. Customers will follow a prioritized remediation roadmap of short, medium, and long-term remediation goals, based on the core Well-Architected Framework (WAF) pillars provided by Ingram Micro AWS experts with an accurate SOW for the implementation cost.


4. Can this be offered to any AWS Customer, or are there any qualifications?

All customers that currently have AWS production or pre-production workloads qualify for the W-A review. In our experience, this is most valuable to customers that are willing to spend the time in remediation and invest in the tools and process recommended by our Solution Architects that align with the Customers long term goals and willing to remediate at least 25% HRI (High Risk Issues).


5. What is an AWS workload?

As defined by AWS: A workload is a collection of resources and codes that deliver business value, such as a customer-facing application or a backend process. A workload might consist of a subset of resources in a single AWS account or be a collection of multiple resources spanning multiple AWS accounts. Examples of workloads are marketing websites, e-commerce websites, the back-ends for a mobile app, analytic platforms, etc. Workloads vary in levels of architectural complexity, from static websites to architectures with multiple data stores and many components.


6. What is a High-Risk Issue (HRI)?

HRIs identified in the AWS Well-Architected Tool are architectural and operational choices that AWS has found might result in significant negative impact to a business. These HRIs might affect organizational operations, assets, and individuals.


7. What tools are utilized for conducting the Well-Architected Review (WAR)?

The W-A tool from AWS is a must. This contains a list of questions that will be filled out during the review and provides the list of issues to be remediated. Apart from that AWS native tools like Trusted Advisor, Cost Explorer or third-party tools like CloudCheckr, nOps, etc. can be utilized. In some cases, trial licenses will be utilized and the customer can purchase, if required. This should be discussed with your Ingram Sales Rep or during the onboarding session with the Solutions Architect.


8. What is the pricing for the services?

Our Standard package is free of charge for one workload and the Premium pricing is based on the issues to be remediated (starting at $4500 USD MSRP).


9. How does a Partner order the Standard or Premium service for a customer?

From the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace (CMP), the service can be ordered under the Infrastructure Category: https://us.cloud.im




Standard Offering - Assessment

1. What is the scope of the Standard Review process?

The scope will include the following:

  • Onboarding of the in-scope AWS accounts for one workload, as defined by the Customer.
  • Run AWS WAR within the accounts to collect the metadata across the cloud resources.
  • Understand the account structure, services used, authentication mechanisms, applications deployed, network setup.
  • Generate the WAR reports for the defined workload.
  • Detailed assessment of the in-scope environment, on top of the assessment reports, across W-A best practices and principles.
  • Generate a detailed consolidated report for each of the pillars, including the best practices, violations & actions to remediate the W-A violations.


2. What is the outcome of the Standard Review process?

The outcome will include:

  • Final Well-Architected Report, covering the in-scope AWS resources, highlighting the violations from the W-A principles, classified by priorities.
  • Recommendation steps to remediate the W-A violations found during the WAR. 
  • SOW for Remediation phase.


3. How long does the Standard Review process take?

The time it takes will vary according to the complexity and scope of the workload. Most reviews will take between 1-2 weeks to complete upon the completion of the onboarding process.


4. What if Customer requires additional workloads to be assessed?

The Customer can convey this to the Solution Architect during the onboarding process.



Premium Offering - Remediation

1. What is the scope of the Premium Remediation process?

The scope will require and include the following:

  • Requires a completion of the AWS WAF Review – Standard Package with the SOW.
  • Customer can decide to select and implement a custom set of remediation from the SOW.
  • Customer can follow a prioritized roadmap of short, medium, and long-term remediation goals, based on the core WAF pillars 
  • The initial goal is to remediate at least 25% of HRIs then the remaining 75% of the HRIs
  • Credit funding is available from AWS if customer chooses to fix at least 25% of HRIs


2. What is the outcome of the Premium Remediation process?

The outcome will include:

  • Completion of all remediation based on the SOW.
  • Completion of AWS submission for credit funding.
  • Discussion of next phases of remediation or additional professional or managed services, if required.


3. How long does the Premium Remediation process take?

The time it takes will vary according to the complexity and scope of the remediation. To achieve the initial 25% remediation goal, most processes will take between 2-4 weeks to complete. The remaining 75% will take 1-3 months depending on the SOW.



Common Sales Questions

1. What are the benefits when integrating Well-Architected services as a standard mechanism in the pre-sales process?

The WAF introduces a consistent and proven methodology to gather information, reduce scoping errors, shorten sales cycles, increase qualified leads, get the right people engaged in the conversation, earn customer trust, and win more business when competing Partners don't follow WAF best practices.


2. What are the benefits when integrating Well-Architected services in QA/QC and Customer Success programs?

Partners have reported integrating W-A services into the QA/QC process eliminates customer attrition, improves brand loyalty, increases higher CSAT scores, increases professional services revenue, and drives new sales opportunities from existing customers and AWS account executives they have existing relationships with.

 

3. What are the benefits when integrating Well-Architected services into the decision-making process across your Architecture, Developer, and Ops practices?

Partners who integrate the WAF as a mechanism reduce costly rework, increase customer sat, and lower risk to the customer. Failure to properly integrate WAF can lead to customers overpaying for AWS services, inability to realize the benefits of AWS and your services, or worse, experience an incident that has a negative business outcome.

 

4. What are the benefits when integrating Well-Architected services into the post-sales process?

It introduces a springboard for more conversations and professional services work as their workloads, applications, and AWS WAF develop new best practices and services that can help the customer realize greater value.


5. Do improvements from WAR lead to the customer spending less with AWS?

According to AWS, Customers usually end up spending more on AWS services because of the level of satisfaction and value they realize from using AWS. This increase in MOM spend varies based on how much they are spending on AWS at the time they make improvements. The lift is a 73% increase based on an average spend of $432 per month, 19% lift on an average spend of $36K, and a 7% lift on a $3.4M spend per month.

 

6. When will these services be available on Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace (CMP)?

US, CA, UK and ES are now available as of February 2021. All other regions TBC.