Managed Services

Critical Technics Essential

Own your accounts, prove your controls, and know what to fix next across your AWS environment.

Best for
Teams who run their own workloads but want the account and governance layer owned by someone else.

Managed Accounts, Plus a Read on Everything in Them

Every AWS environment has a layer beneath the workloads: organization structure, guardrails, IAM roles, logging, tagging. It works quietly in the background, so ownership of it tends to stay informal. That changes the moment an audit arrives, a new team needs accounts, or finance asks where the spend is going.

Essential makes that layer somebody’s job. We maintain the structure, keep guardrails current, review access, and collect control evidence.

We also read the resources running inside those accounts. Cost, right-sizing, performance, availability, resilience, security posture. You get ranked findings with the fix identified, not a dashboard to interpret. Acting on workload changes stays with your team until you add Professional.

Everything Your Workloads Depend On

Essential owns your AWS accounts and reports on everything running in them. Your team acts on the findings, or Professional does.

An Account Structure That Scales

New accounts get provisioned in days, with baseline configuration applied automatically. The structure that works at three accounts still works at thirty, because we maintain it as you grow instead of letting it drift.

Audit-Ready Governance

Guardrails block the changes you would not approve. Config rules catch the rest. Your audit trail is complete and stored where an assessor can reach it, so control questions have a policy answer and the evidence behind it.

Insight You Can Act On

We review your resources for cost, right-sizing, performance, availability, and resilience, then hand you a ranked list with the fix identified on each item. Cost and performance are weighed together, so the two move in step.

No Lock-In

Everything runs in your accounts, defined in code in your repository. Your configuration lives in your repository and stays with you.

What’s Included in Essential

Standing responsibilities across the AWS account layer.

Account Structure & Provisioning

AWS Organizations and Control Tower maintained as your business changes. New accounts vended with baseline configuration applied automatically, and clean separation between production, non-production, security tooling, and log archive.

Guardrails & Governance

Service Control Policies that block dangerous actions. AWS Config rules that detect drift on everything else. Control Tower controls kept current as AWS adds them, and reviewed whenever your obligations change.

Identity & Access

IAM Identity Center, role design, and least-privilege permission sets maintained against how your teams work. Access reviewed on a schedule, so permissions stay current with the work.

Logging & Audit Trail

CloudTrail, VPC Flow Logs, and Config history aggregated to a dedicated archive account. Retention matched to your obligations. Write access restricted, so the accounts being recorded cannot edit the record.

Compliance Evidence & Drift Detection

Your control set mapped to the environment, evidence collected continuously, and drift surfaced as it happens. Framework-specific work such as a FedRAMP baseline, a CMMC level, or a named assessment is scoped on top.

Network & Connectivity

VPC and subnet design, inter-account routing, transit connectivity, and links to on-premises. Address space planned so the design still fits when your account count doubles.

Cost Optimization & Attribution

Tagging policy enforced, cost centers identified, and spend attributed by team and workload. Right-sizing, Reserved Instance and Savings Plan coverage reviewed on a cadence, orphaned resources found, and savings quantified before you act. We will also tell you whether an Enterprise Discount Program or private pricing is worth pursuing at your spend level.

Environment Insights & Recommendations

Regular review of the resources in your accounts for performance, high availability, and resilience, including recurring Well-Architected assessment. We analyze your alert and ticket history for the causes behind recurring alerts, and confirm that cost changes and performance targets stay in balance. Findings are ranked by impact with the remediation identified, and tracked until they close.

Advisory Cadence & Billing Support

A standing review covering drift, spend, and upcoming changes, run by a named team that already knows your environment.

How It Works

Onboarding

We document the account layer as it stands today, then bring it to an agreed baseline. Everything lands as code in your repository.

Continuous ownership

Provisioning, guardrail updates, access reviews, and cost attribution run as standing work. You do not raise a ticket for them.

Standing review

A regular session covering drift, spend, and what is coming, at a cadence matched to how fast your organization moves.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know if we need this?

Common signals: account provisioning takes weeks, logging coverage across accounts is unconfirmed, IAM permissions have grown ad hoc since the last review, or attributing spend to teams takes a manual exercise. Any of those means the account layer is ready for an owner.

Do you touch our workloads?

We analyze them. Operating them begins at Professional. Essential reviews every resource in your accounts for cost, performance, availability, and security, and gives you ranked findings with the fix identified. Deploying, patching, monitoring, and incident response inside your applications all start at the next tier.

Is this just a report?

No. We own the account layer outright, so guardrails, identity, logging, networking, and cost attribution are maintained by us. The insight side covers resources we do not operate, and there we hand you ranked findings with the remediation identified. We track those findings through to closure.

Is compliance included, or is it extra?

Included at every tier: control mapping, evidence collection, drift detection, and assessment support. Compliance on AWS is account-layer work, which is what this tier owns. Framework-specific effort is scoped on top, because it depends on the framework rather than the size of your environment.

Are you an assessor or a 3PAO?

No. We build and maintain environments. We do not assess them for certification, and for some frameworks that separation is required. We work alongside your assessor. The authorization is always yours to hold.

Why not just buy AWS Enterprise Support?

AWS Support answers the question you ask. It does not maintain your organization structure, review your IAM, or know why your environment is shaped the way it is. The two work together, and we escalate into AWS Support when an issue belongs there.

What access do you need?

Scoped, auditable roles in your accounts. No shared credentials, and no more access than the service requires. Every action we take is logged in your CloudTrail, visible to you. We can work in GovCloud and under whatever personnel requirements your contracts impose.

Do you use proprietary tooling?

No. Everything we deploy is AWS-native or open source, running in your accounts, defined in code in your repository.

What happens if we cancel?

You keep the code, the documentation, the guardrails, and the reasoning behind the structure. Everything stays exactly where it already lives, in your accounts.

Related work

Book a Free AWS Account Review

We will assess your account structure, guardrails, identity, logging, and cost attribution, then show you what Essential would take off your plate.

Book Your Review