AWS Well-Architected Review
Independent workload review against the six Well-Architected pillars — security, reliability, performance, cost, ops, sustainability. Delivers a ranked remediation plan with effort/impact scoring and quick-win identification. This is an audit, not a sales pitch.
Overview
A Well-Architected review is a structured, no-blame assessment of a workload against six pillars — operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimisation, and sustainability. Most teams know their environment has gaps but cannot rank them by business risk. The review surfaces those gaps with a clear priority order, separating the things that will hurt you from the things that are merely imperfect. We run it as an independent assessment with a ranked remediation plan you can execute yourself or with us — not a sales pitch dressed as an audit.
Clevertek scopes every engagement to your environment — capacity, sites, compliance and support model — so you get a tailored plan rather than a fixed SKU. Pricing is quote-only, and our solutions architects will work through your requirements before any proposal.
Our approach
We facilitate Well-Architected reviews that give you an objective, ranked picture of where your AWS workloads are exposed. The review is not an automated scan — it is a facilitated session with your team, going through each pillar with structured questions and evidence collection. We score each workload against best-practice lenses, identify high-risk gaps, and rank remediation items by business impact and effort. The output is not a slide deck — it is a prioritised action plan with owner assignments and estimated effort for each fix. We can execute the remediation ourselves, coach your team through it, or hand you the plan. We also offer re-reviews at defined intervals to measure progress.
Why work with us
Independent and honest
We facilitate the review without a reseller agenda. Gaps are called out honestly, and where the answer is not to add more AWS services, we say so.
Ranked by business impact, not technical interest
Remediation items are ranked by the risk they pose to your business — not by which fix is most technically satisfying. You fix the expensive, dangerous gaps first.
Actionable output, not a slide deck
You leave with a prioritised list of changes, each with an owner, estimated effort, and business impact. No recommendations you cannot act on.
Optional follow-through
We can execute the quick wins immediately, build the longer-term fixes on a schedule, or hand the plan to your team. The review is useless without the next step.
Re-review to measure progress
A second review six months later measures what improved, what regressed, and what new risks emerged. You get a trend, not a snapshot.
No-blame culture
The review is explicitly framed as a shared discovery exercise, not an audit. Your team participates openly because the point is improvement, not finger-pointing.
Key benefits
What this solution delivers for your business.
Clear visibility into risk exposure
A structured assessment against all six pillars reveals gaps you knew about and ones you did not — ranked so you can prioritise remediation spending.
Prioritised, actionable remediation plan
Not a generic checklist. Every finding comes with a business impact rating, estimated effort, owner assignment, and recommended remediation approach.
Cost savings from optimisation opportunities
The cost pillar review typically identifies rightsizing, reserved-instance, and waste-removal opportunities that pay for the review within months.
Improved security and compliance posture
The security and reliability pillars surface configuration gaps, IAM risks, and resilience weaknesses before they are exploited or fail in production.
Audit-ready evidence and documentation
The review output serves as evidence of due diligence for customer audits, compliance reviews, and internal risk assessments.
Measurable improvement over time
Re-reviews track pillar scores over time, giving you an objective measure of whether your cloud maturity is improving — and where it is regressing.
What's included
Part of this managed service.
Operational excellence review
Assessment of runbooks, monitoring, incident response, change management, and deployment practices against Well-Architected best practices.
- Runbook completeness and testing
- Monitoring and alerting coverage
- Incident response process review
- Change management and deployment practices
Security pillar review
Evaluation of IAM, encryption, logging, network security, and incident response against the security pillar and relevant compliance frameworks.
- IAM least-privilege assessment
- Encryption at rest and in transit
- CloudTrail and audit logging review
- Network security and segmentation
Reliability and performance review
Assessment of workload architecture for fault tolerance, scalability, performance efficiency, and disaster recovery readiness.
- Single-point-of-failure analysis
- Auto-scaling and elasticity review
- Backup and DR strategy assessment
- Performance bottleneck identification
Cost and sustainability review
Analysis of cost optimisation opportunities, waste identification, and sustainability practices — with modelled savings estimates.
- Rightsizing and reserved-instance analysis
- Storage cost tier optimisation
- Idle and orphaned resource identification
- Sustainability and carbon footprint review
Where it helps
Real-world scenarios where this solution delivers measurable outcomes.
A workload that scares you
Get an objective read on where your most critical workload is fragile, expensive, or insecure — ranked so you can act on the highest-risk items this quarter.
Pre-audit readiness
Walk into a customer or compliance audit having already identified and closed the gaps that would have surfaced as findings.
Cloud maturity benchmarking
Establish a baseline Well-Architected score for your estate, then track improvement through quarterly or bi-annual re-reviews.
Questions buyers actually ask
Is this just an AWS sales pitch?
No. It is a structured method, and we facilitate it independently. Where AWS credits or programs genuinely help your case we will say so; where they do not, we say that too.
How long does a review take?
A single workload reviews in one or two focused sessions. A portfolio is sequenced across weeks. You leave with a ranked plan, not a slide deck.
Do you fix what you find?
Your call. Many clients want us to action the quick wins immediately; others prefer to take the plan in-house. Either way the ranking tells you what to do first.
What is included in the cost pillar?
Rightsizing analysis, reserved-instance and savings-plan modelling, storage tier optimisation, idle resource identification, and data-transfer cost review — with modelled savings for each recommendation.
How often should we do a review?
Annually as a baseline, or bi-annually for critical workloads. We also recommend a re-review after any major architecture change or before a compliance audit.
Ready to scope a solution?
Talk to a Clevertek solutions architect about your requirements — no obligation.