What is our primary use case?
My main use case for AWS Organizations is implementing effective governance and scalability.
On my recent project, I established robust governance with AWS Organizations by centralizing management and enforcing compliance across the multi-account AWS environment that we had. Additionally, I utilized organizational units to create a hierarchical structure that mirrors our business framework, and I used service control policies for setting mandatory guardrails.
In addition to establishing robust governance, I also utilize organizational units to create a scalable account structure with AWS Organizations. By enforcing governance and using service control policies, we ensure that those policies and organizational units are company-wide, enabling consistent compliance and efficient management at the enterprise level.
How has it helped my organization?
AWS Organizations has contributed significantly to helping us have an organized and secured environment. By implementing preventative guardrails, we can ensure centralized billing and account management.
We've enabled departmental chargebacks and facilitated trend analysis due to AWS Organizations, which has provided us with granular visibility into our costs through centralized billing. That's a very good outcome for us. With service control policies, we automatically ensure compliance and mitigate risk in our daily tasks.
What is most valuable?
The best features that AWS Organizations offers include service control policies because they help me to affect comprehensive governance, especially with the organizational units for scalability and centralized billing and account management. It provides me with the tools I need for effective governance, ensuring compliance across the entire enterprise, particularly with implementing guardrails with the service control policies.
With service control policies, I'm able to enforce preventative guardrails, automatically ensuring compliance and mitigating risk in my daily work. Centralized billing has given me significant financial management control with a unified cost view. In my various projects, service control policies have helped prevent non-compliant deployments by restricting specific AWS regions or prohibiting service access.
In addition, the service control policies have greatly helped me maintain security and regulatory standards while implementing centralized billing.
What needs improvement?
I believe there is always room for improvement with AWS Organizations, and we can achieve a deeper granular governance through more sophisticated service control policies and robust automation for the entire account lifecycle. By balancing security constraints with development agility and enhancing scalability, we can have a better AWS Organization.
My personal experience indicates a need for context-aware service control policies that enforce strict security boundaries without stifling the need for innovation. We need preventative guardrails, but that should not hinder the innovation we have. Therefore, the development of context-aware service control policies is crucial for a scalable environment.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using AWS Organizations for over eight years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
AWS Organizations is stable. It has been efficient and has provided us with exactly what we needed to accomplish our goals.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability with AWS Organizations has been effective, supporting the massive growth of our architecture and enabling complex management with thousands of accounts in a hierarchical structure. The various organizational units allow for efficient propagation of policies, leading to effective management of complex environments while mitigating risk, especially during times of rapid growth or high traffic.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support has been great, and we've experienced no issues so far. I can say it has been reliable and dependable.
I would rate the customer support a 9 out of 10 for its effectiveness.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, my organization primarily managed tasks on-prem using VMware and virtual machines, which lacked centralized billing and linked accounts. However, with AWS Organizations, the organization benefits from centralized billing, robust governance, scalability, and centralized control, as well as various organizational units and service control policies, which are numerous advantages.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment because before implementing AWS Organizations in a project I began with on AWS, it was managed on-prem. Managing everything manually was burdensome. However, with AWS Organizations, there has been a significant reduction in costs and billing. It has also greatly helped with automation concerning compliance, risk, and manual efforts, leading to substantial cost savings while providing a scalable, secure, and cost-effective cloud environment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been seamless so far because everything was quite straightforward. There were no upfront costs, no setup fees, and no special licensing. The pricing model has basically been a consolidated billing feature, which has made the entire process smooth and effective.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing AWS Organizations, we evaluated centralized management policies provided by various organizations, but we opted for AWS Organizations due to its custom management framework, cost-effectiveness, and scalability. It also offered the ability to centralize security management while incorporating potential complexities and providing native integration with AWS services.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate AWS Organizations a 9 out of 10 because it has been very effective and efficient for me.
I choose a 9 out of 10 because AWS Organizations has provided essential governance, scalability, and security controls for managing complex AWS environments. I've been able to enforce compliance policies, maintain a strong security posture, and utilize service control policies effectively, especially in implementing preventative guardrails. It has been a wonderful tool so far, but I believe there's a little room for improvement.
Regarding governance and security within AWS Organizations' AI capabilities, I think it has been very effective and valuable for enforcing global security and compliance standards centrally. The robust governance and security controls for AI capabilities are top-notch.
In terms of the accuracy and reliability of outputs, I find the output to be solid and relatively reliable, making it something I can trust in production. However, when using AI capabilities, I want to ensure I can enforce strict policy governance by establishing direct impacts. While I rely on the service's outputs, I want to check for centralized validation, compliance checks, and ensure that the deployments meet stringent standards, particularly when it comes to AI deployments.
For organizations considering AWS Organizations, I advise focusing on establishing a robust foundational structure from the outset. Centralized governance and strict security policies are essential for a scalable and compliant cloud environment. Implementing AWS Organizations requires careful architectural design, including a clear organizational unit structure. You should group accounts based on function and compliance needs, and prioritize centralized governance. I recommend utilizing service control policies to establish preventative guardrails that ensure compliance across all accounts and prevent unauthorized actions.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)