Why Blue Pencil + AWS
AWS is the global benchmark for cloud innovation offering unmatched breadth in compute, storage, databases, analytics, machine learning, multi-region resiliency and pay-as-you-scale economics.
Migration & Cloud Adoption
AWS Advantage
Migration & Cloud Adoption
Elastic compute, automated provisioning, multi-tier architectures
Resilience & DR
Multi-AZ, multi-region failover, automated backups, chaos-resilient infra
Analytics at Scale
Redshift, EMR, Glue, Athena, OpenSearch
AI/ML Workloads
SageMaker, Bedrock, Train/Inference pipelines, Vector DBs
GenAI Enterprise Buildouts
Bedrock, Claude/Amazon Q, secure private RAG systems
Data Lakes
S3-centric Lakehouse architectures with governance layers
App Modernization
Containers (EKS/ECS), Serverless (Lambda), Microservices, API mesh
SecOps & Cloud Governance
IAM, KMS, Guard Duty, SCP, WAF, Detective, Control Tower
Blue Pencil AWS Practice Areas
1. Cloud Migration & Infrastructure Re-Platforming
We migrate applications, workloads, databases and VM estates into highly available AWS landing zones.
Scope includes:
VM/Server migration using CloudEndure + Application Migration Service
Landing zone creation under AWS Control Tower/OUs/SCPs
Network architecture (VPC, Transit Gateway, TGW, VPN, DX)
Security baselining, identity segmentation, CIS guardrails
Outcomes: reduced infra OPEX, improved uptime, auto-scaling environments.
2. Application Modernization (Microservices + Containers + Serverless)
Lift → Shift → Re-architect → Optimize.
Modernization accelerators:
Containerized workloads on EKS/ECS Fargate
API/Microservices decomposition
Refactor monoliths to Lambda-based serverless mesh
CI/CD pipelines via CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy
Infra automation using Terraform / CDK
Outcome: Faster releases, lower compute cost, scalable application throughput.
3. Data Lake & Analytics Engineering on AWS
Build enterprise-wide unified data planes with lakehouse architecture.
Core stack:
S3 Data Lake + Lake Formation governance
ETL/ELT pipelines using Glue, EMR, Step Functions
Query engines using Athena, Redshift, OpenSearch
Real-time streams from Kinesis/Kafka-on-MSK
BI models for dashboards, KPI forecasting, anomaly detection
Outcome: Single source of truth, advanced data analytics, democratized insights.
4. AI/ML & Generative AI Solutions
Enable intelligence beyond cloud operations.
We build & operationalize AI systems using:
Amazon SageMaker for training, tuning & inference pipelines
Amazon Bedrock for private LLM, enterprise RAG & GenAI copilots
Vector embeddings, enterprise-document indexing & Q&A search
Forecasting, churn modeling, fraud detection, predictive maintenance
Outcome: decisions fueled by models, automation beyond human velocity.
5. Business Continuity, Backup & Multi-Region DR
Zero-downtime. Multi-AZ. Failover-ready.
DR design patterns:
Active-Passive & Active-Active replication
Cross-region failover with Route53/Global Accelerator
Immutable backups + snapshot lifecycle automation
RPO/RTO-aligned recovery blueprint
Outcome: operational continuity under failures, cyber-attack resilience.
6. Cloud FinOps & Governance Automation
Optimizing cloud continuously.
Rightsizing, reserved instance planning, autoscaling policies
CloudWatch/X-Ray/Prometheus/Grafana observability stack
Cost anomaly detection + optimization playbooks
Guardrails using SCP/IAM + compliance posture monitoring (Audit Manager, Security Hub)
Outcome: measurable cost savings, predictable spend curves, enforced cloud hygiene.
AWS-Centric Use Cases (Problem → Solution → Impact)
Use Case 1: Mainframe/Monolith → Modern Cloud Platform
Problem: Slow releases, high infra cost, scaling bottlenecks
Solution: Re-platform to EKS microservices + event-driven Lambda
Impact: Release cycle from monthly → weekly, 58% infra cost reduction
Use Case 2: Data Lake + AI-Driven Analytics
Problem: Fragmented data across DBs, apps, teams
Solution: Enterprise data lake on S3 + Glue + Athena + Redshift + SageMaker ML
Impact: Single analytics fabric, forecasting models reducing churn by double digits
Use Case 3: GenAI-Powered Knowledge Search
Problem: Teams waste hours locating documents/info
Solution: Bedrock-hosted private RAG system with vector embeddings
Impact: 60–80% faster knowledge retrieval, IP stays private & compliant
What Blue Pencil Offers Around AWS Control Tower (As Your Cloud Governance Partner)
If Blue Pencil offers AWS services to clients, leveraging Control Tower allows it to provide a robust baseline for cloud governance and operations. We can offer:
Landing-Zone Design & Deployment: We set up your AWS Organization, define Organizational Units (OUs) per environment (e.g. production, staging, dev, sandbox, shared services), configure security / identity / network baselines, and deploy your landing zone using Control Tower’s blueprints.
Account Factory Setup for Self-service Deployment: Create templated, preconfigured account templates. Business units or teams can spin up compliant AWS accounts rapidly while you maintain central control and compliance.
Guardrails & Compliance Configurations: We define preventive and detective guardrails relevant for your business e.g. region restrictions, encryption mandates, logging/enabling auditing, least-privilege IAM, resource tag enforcement. Then we apply these across all accounts, so compliance is enforced automatically.
Centralized Logging, Audit & Monitoring Setup: As part of setup, we configure cross-account logging, CloudTrail, AWS Config, and central audit/data-archive accounts. This ensures traceability, compliance readiness, and unified audit capability from day 1.
Governance & Policy Management Over Time: As your AWS footprint scales Blue Pencil helps manage control-updates, policy adjustments, onboarding of new accounts into the structure, ongoing compliance reviews, drift detection/correction.
Secure Multi-Account Foundation for Advanced Workloads: With a governed foundation in place, clients are ready to safely run workloads such as data lakes, analytics, ML/AI, disaster-recovery architecture, multi-region apps, etc. Control Tower ensures the underlying cloud environment remains secure, compliant, and well-architected.
Using AWS Control Tower (via Blue Pencil) yields significant advantages:
Faster, Safer Cloud Onboarding: Rather than spending weeks designing account architecture and governance manually, your organization gets a compliant, secure landing zone in hours speeding time-to-cloud while avoiding configuration mistakes. Amazon Web Services, Inc.+2Caylent+2
Consistent Governance at Scale: As the number of AWS accounts grows (multiple teams, projects, environments), Control Tower ensures corporate policies are uniformly enforced. No more drift, misconfigurations, or unmanaged sprawl.
Reduced Operational & Compliance Risk: With centralized logging, enforcement of guardrails, audit-ready environment, identity & access control your security posture and compliance readiness improve dramatically.
Empowering Teams While Preserving Control: Development teams get self-service account provisioning; central admins retain oversight, control over policy, governance and compliance striking a balance between agility and control.
Foundation for Advanced Architecture: With a well-governed multi-account foundation, it's safer to build complex workloads of data lakes, ML pipelines, DR-ready multi-region deployments, microservices, containerization without compromising governance.
Simplified Management & Lower Admin Overhead: Governance, compliance and account lifecycle management become automated; less manual effort required, fewer human errors, easier audits, and transparent oversight.
When you are migrating multiple workloads or teams to AWS and need a structured, governed multi-account setup.
When you run projects across different environments (prod, staging, dev, sandbox) and want strict segregation + governance per environment.
When compliance, security, auditability, logging, and IAM governance are critical (regulated industries, sensitive data workloads).
When your organization expects to scale across many AWS accounts in near future you want a foundation that scales.
When you plan advanced workloads (data analytics, AI/ML, multi-region DR, microservices) but want to ensure the underlying infrastructure is compliant, consistent and well-managed.
Contact Blue Pencil Strategies today for a complimentary assessment of your architecture, SaaS model and governance strategy. We’ll help you define your landing zone, integrate your SaaS platform and operationalize governance and scale.
