How the Right MSP Maximizes Your AWS Environment

How the Right MSP Maximizes Your AWS Environment

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After more than a decade of experience tackling AWS and Azure, I’ve seen firsthand how powerful the cloud can be when it’s done right—and how frustrating it can be when it’s not. I’ve had the chance to partner with businesses ranging from lean startups to scaling SMBs, helping them unlock the full potential of their cloud environments. Too often, though, I see companies investing in the cloud without truly capitalizing on it—leaving performance gains, cost savings, and scalability on the table.

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There’s a big difference between being in the cloud and being built for it. In this blog, I will discuss how Managed Service Providers (MSPs) like DataStrike can help SMBs address these challenges, drawing from my work with clients across various industries. Through strategic cloud management and optimization, MSPs play a critical role in helping businesses maximize their AWS investment, ensuring they achieve both short-term cost savings and long-term operational success. That’s where an MSP with AWS expertise, like ours, steps in.

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Why SMBs turn to MSPs for AWS Help

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Many clients who approach us already have workloads running in AWS. But what we often find is that their infrastructure has been spun up hastily, sometimes insecurely, and without long-term cost efficiency or architectural optimization in mind. Others are still on-prem and looking to migrate — and these organizations often lack the in-house expertise to confidently manage migration to AWS let alone operate the AWS environment post-migration. Whether they’re migrating or already operating in the cloud, what they need is guidance, structure, and deep cloud knowledge.

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How does Automated Scaling and Resource Management maximize a client’s AWS investment?

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Maximizing an AWS investment requires an understanding of the workloads and access patterns within the environment. This is where the scalability and flexibility of AWS come into play. By conducting a Well-Architected Framework review with customers, an MSP can gain valuable insights into a workload with improvement plans.

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Ensuring a workload is scalable and flexible means you can easily scale your resources up or down to meet the demands of the business. This includes making the right choice of services and technologies for compute, storage, databases, and more.  This could include scaling up during peak hours and scaling down when demand is low. By analyzing workloads, such as those of an e-commerce platform, an MSP can ensure that compute power is allocated efficiently during high-traffic periods while minimizing costs during lower-traffic periods without sacrificing customer experience.

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In addition to this, MSPs need to evaluate a number of factors to closely identify opportunities around scaling and cost optimization. This means considering the entire ecosystem and understanding the intricacies of how each resource interacts with others within the AWS environment.

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What happens when SMBs already have AWS but need help?

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Sometimes, businesses already have their AWS infrastructure in place but need help with managing and optimizing it. This situation often arises when a company assumes that its cloud infrastructure is "set and forget," but over time, inefficiencies start to accumulate, leading to potential issues like over-provisioning and security gaps. Another situation we frequently encounter is post-migration. Maybe a lack of best practices or a very aggressive timeline due to data center exits, resulting in a “lift-and-shift" approach. These situations often lack the expertise, governance, or time to do a proper optimization phase post go-live.

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In these cases, an MSP can help by focusing on:

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• Cost Optimization: Identifying areas where AWS resources are underutilized and proposing changes to reduce unnecessary expenditures.

• Operational Excellence: Helping companies scale efficiently, especially when they lack the in-house expertise to handle growing demands or unexpected traffic surges while continually improving processes and procedures.

• Security and Resilience: Performing thorough security audits and helping implement best practices to ensure that the infrastructure is resilient and secure.

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What are the first steps MSPs take when entering a client’s AWS environment?

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When an MSP enters a client’s AWS environment, the first thing they do is assess the current infrastructure to understand the health and security posture of the environment. We do this through a variety of AS native tools, custom, or third part tools that help identify potential issues such as underused resources, security risks, or misconfigurations.

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After gathering an understanding of the overall health and structure of the holistic environment. MSPs will often conduct a workshop in the form of a Well-Architected Framework review with the client. This review ensures that the AWS workload meets best practices in key areas such as security, reliability, performance efficiency, and more. This deep dive into the client’s environment helps the MSP gather insights into workload patterns, enabling them to propose improvements for better support, efficiency, and alignment with the business’s goals.

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Why are the benefits of working with an expert MSP?

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In many cases, businesses turn to MSPs for AWS services because their in-house teams either lack the necessary expertise or resources to manage AWS effectively. Some businesses may even face a skills gap, with their IT teams only familiar with on-prem technologies like VMware. MSPs step in to bridge this gap by offering specialized expertise in AWS and providing ongoing management of the infrastructure.

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Moreover, SMBs benefit from working with an MSP for the following reasons:

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• Scalability: MSPs can scale the business’s AWS resources according to demand, without requiring the business to hire additional staff.

• Work-Life Balance: By outsourcing AWS management, in-house IT teams can focus on more strategic tasks, leading to a better work-life balance.

• Expertise: MSPs bring subject-matter expertise, offering advanced knowledge that SMBs may not have access to on their own.

• Cost Savings: MSPs help businesses save money by identifying cost-saving opportunities and making adjustments to the AWS environment to eliminate wasteful spending, while offering full-time or fractional support to augment your teams' workloads.

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Why DataStrike?

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At DataStrike, we don’t just manage infrastructure—we drive outcomes. As the largest onshore provider of data infrastructure services for small- and mid-sized businesses, we combine deep AWS expertise with a practical, business-first mindset. Our team becomes an extension of yours, bringing clarity to your cloud environment, solving real operational challenges, and turning AWS into a strategic asset—not a confusing expense.

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We know how to speak the language of business and the language of cloud. Whether you're looking to stabilize your workloads, optimize your costs, or lay the foundation for future growth, we help you move with confidence. At the end of the day, it’s not just about cloud performance—it’s about your performance. Contact us today to find how we optimize your cloud envirnonments.

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