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Know where your AWS workload really stands.

A structured review of one workload against the six Well-Architected pillars, with findings, prioritised recommendations and a practical roadmap for improving it.

Request a Well-Architected Review

A Well-Architected Review is a structured conversation about one specific AWS workload. We examine how it is designed and operated against the six pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework, and agree what to improve first.

  • Operational excellence: running, monitoring and improving the workload.
  • Security: protecting data, systems and assets.
  • Reliability: recovering from failure and meeting demand.
  • Performance efficiency: using resources effectively as needs change.
  • Cost optimisation: avoiding unnecessary spending.
  • Sustainability: minimising the environmental impact of running the workload.

CloudStraight is a member of the AWS Well-Architected Partner Program.

The six pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework: operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimisation and sustainability.Well-Architected FrameworkOperational excellenceSecurityReliabilityPerformance efficiencyCost optimisationSustainability

Why do a review

  • Surface risks early

    Find weaknesses in security, reliability and operations while they are still cheap to fix, not during an incident.

  • Make trade-offs visible

    See where a design favours one pillar at the cost of another, and decide on purpose.

  • Strengthen resilience and security

    Close gaps in recovery, access control, monitoring and protection.

  • Find cost and performance gains

    Identify waste, oversized resources and architectural changes that reduce cost or improve speed.

What you receive

Findings

A clear account of what is working and where the risks are, for each of the six pillars.

Prioritised recommendations

Improvements ranked by business impact and effort, so you know what to do first.

A practical roadmap

A sequenced plan your team can follow, with owners and next steps.

Implementation, if you want it

The review itself does not include implementation. You can carry out the improvements yourselves, or ask CloudStraight to help as a separate engagement.

When to do one

  • Before launching a new workload
  • After a major change to the architecture
  • When incidents, outages or rising costs raise concerns
  • Regularly, as part of continuous workload improvement

What happens

Two colleagues going through a checklist on a tablet next to a printed architecture diagram.

  1. Agree the workload and the goals

    Choose the workload to review and what you want from it: resilience, security, cost, performance or all of them.

  2. Review design and operations with your team

    Work through the framework's questions with the engineers and operators who build and run the workload.

  3. Identify risks and strengths

    Record what is well designed, what is missing and which risks matter most.

  4. Prioritise the improvements

    Rank actions by business impact and effort, and agree the roadmap.

Technical foundations on AWS

The review follows the AWS Well-Architected Framework and can use the AWS Well-Architected Tool to record answers, risks and improvement plans.

  • AWS Well-Architected Framework
  • AWS Well-Architected Tool
  • AWS Well-Architected Lenses
  • Lenses extend the framework to specific domains, such as generative AI.

How we run a review

  • Based on the real workload

    We review how the workload is actually built and run, not only how it was drawn.

  • Your engineers in the room

    The people who build and operate the workload take part, so findings are understood and owned.

  • Findings, not blame

    The aim is to understand risk and agree improvements, not to assign fault.

  • A roadmap you can use anywhere

    The output is yours to act on, with or without CloudStraight.

Where we apply it

Evidence

  • Member of the AWS Well-Architected Partner Program
  • AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner

Related services

Related insights

Want to know where your workload stands?

Tell us about the workload and what worries you most. We will propose a review.

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