In today's digital as-a-service world, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) businesses face unique challenges when it comes to delivering their applications securely and efficiently.  

These challenges often start in the early days of their business growth.  

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The fast-paced nature of a start-up coupled with the pace of agile development often leads to the business and developers prioritising application functionality and time-to-market over the most efficient use of cloud infrastructures or the adherence to security best practices and frameworks such as NIST and OWSAP.    

Many Application businesses start with and maintain a developer led approach in the early months and even years of the business’s growth. The pressure to meet short-term targets and release dates often leads to best practices and security considerations being reprioritised or overlooked, leaving vulnerabilities within the supporting infrastructure as this is not the software developers' area of expertise.  

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But as the business grows with increasing customer expectations and ever more stringent compliance requirements on the horizon, it is crucial for these businesses to have a robust, secure and scalable infrastructure in place.

There are many reasons why growing Application businesses should harness the power of the AWS ecosystem, and how leveraging Infrastructure as Code (IaC) will benefit and indeed enhance their business.

Application businesses built in AWS should be leveraging the three key foundations of:  

· The Well-Architected Framework  

· AWS Security Reference Architecture (SRA)  

· Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC)  

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These three foundations will allow you to accelerate the growth of your business, to automate and streamline operations, reduce costs, improve the customer experience through better performance whilst ensuring continuous adherence to the best practice fundamentals of security and regulatory compliance.

1. The Well-Architected Framework: Driving Excellence in Scalability and Reliability

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The Well-Architected Framework serves as a guide for building secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructures on AWS. As an application business, adopting this framework offers many benefits:  

1. a) Scalability: AWS provides an elastic infrastructure that allows businesses to scale their applications seamlessly, ensuring that they can handle increasing workloads and user demands without disruption.
2. b) Reliability: The AWS ecosystem offers a highly available and fault-tolerant environment, reducing the risk of downtime and ensuring uninterrupted service for customers.
3. c) Cost Optimisation: By leveraging the best practices outlined in the Well-Architected Framework, businesses can optimise their infrastructure costs, aligning resource utilisation with actual needs and achieving greater efficiency.
4. d) Performance Efficiency: The framework promotes the implementation of architectures and designs that optimise application performance, resulting in faster response times and improved user experiences.
5. AWS Security Reference Architecture: Strengthening Security and Compliance

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Ensuring the security and compliance of your application is paramount. The AWS Secure Reference Architecture (SRA) provides a blueprint for building secure and compliant architectures. Key benefits of leveraging SRA include:  

1. a) Security Best Practices: The SRA incorporates industry-leading security practices, including network segmentation, encryption, secure access management, and threat detection, reducing the risk of security breaches.
2. b) Compliance Adherence: The SRA aligns with various security and compliance standards, such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, and GDPR, enabling you to meet the specific requirements of your customers without investing excessive time and effort.
3. c) Streamlined Audits: By adopting the SRA, businesses can simplify and accelerate the auditing process, providing clear evidence of your adherence to security and compliance standards.
4. Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Automating Security and Compliance

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Building out infrastructure using IaC is a game-changer for ISVs and SaaS businesses, enabling them to automate their operations and achieve continuous compliance. Here's how it works:  

1. a) Consistency and Efficiency: IaC enables the deployment and configuration of infrastructure resources in a programmatic and repeatable manner. By defining infrastructure as code, businesses can ensure consistency across environments, reduce human errors, and expedite the deployment process.  
2. b) Continuous Compliance: Using IaC allows businesses to incorporate security and compliance controls directly into their infrastructure code. This ensures that each deployment is automatically configured to adhere to the required security and compliance standards, reducing the risk of misconfigurations or deviations.  
3. c) Streamlined Updates and Rollbacks: With IaC, businesses can easily manage to their infrastructure by making changes to the code and implementing IaC into their pipeline. This enhances agility and enables businesses to respond quickly to evolving security requirements and customer needs.  
4. d) Scalable Infrastructure Management: As Application businesses grow, managing infrastructure manually becomes increasingly challenging. IaC simplifies the process by providing a centralised approach to manage and scale infrastructure, ensuring efficiency and reducing operational overhead.

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Conclusion:  

Embracing and leveraging the capabilities of the native AWS solutions is not always the first choice for many in the early days, but as these businesses mature it becomes an essential stage of development.  

1. The AWS ecosystem, along with the Well-Architected Framework, AWS Secure Reference Architecture, and Infrastructure as Code, presents a compelling solution for growing and expanding Application businesses. By leveraging these resources, businesses can build scalable, reliable, secure, and compliant architectures while automating operations and ensuring continuous adherence to security and compliance standards. enabling them to focus on innovations, driving customer satisfaction, and propelling their growth to new heights in today's competitive landscape.

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