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2023 Blog, AWS Platform, Blog, Featured

Cloud Management, Automation, DevOps and AIOps – Key Offerings from Relevance Lab

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January, 2023

- 2023 Blog, AWS Platform, Blog, Featured

Relevance Lab (RL) is a specialist company in helping customers adopt cloud “The Right Way” by focusing on an “Automation-First” and DevOps strategy. It covers the full lifecycle of migration, governance, security, monitoring, ITSM integration, app modernization, and DevOps maturity. Leveraging a combination of services and products for cloud adoption, we help customers on a “Plan-Build-Run” transformation that drives greater velocity of product innovation, global deployment scale, and cost optimization for new generation technology (SaaS) and enterprise companies.

In this blog, we will cover some common themes that we have been using to help our customers for cloud adoption as part of their maturity journey.


  • SaaS with multi-tenant architecture
  • Multi-Account Cloud Management for AWS
  • Microservices architecture with Docker and Kubernetes (AWS EKS)
  • Jenkins for CI/CD pipelines and focus on cloud agnostic tools
  • AWS Control Tower for Cloud Management & Governance solution (policy, security & governance)
  • DevOps maturity models
  • Cost optimization, agility, and automation needs
  • Standardization for M&A (Merger & Acquisitions) integrations and scale with multiple cloud provider management
  • Spectrum of AWS governance for optimum utilization, robust security, and reduction of budget
  • Automation/BOT landscape, how different strategies are appropriate at different levels, and the industry best practice adoption for the same
  • Reference enterprise strategy for structuring DevOps for engineering environment which has cloud native development and the products which are SaaS-based.

Relevance Lab Cloud and DevOps Credentials at a Glance

  • RL has been a cloud, DevOps, and automation specialist since inception in 2011 (10+ years)
  • Implemented 50+ successful customer cloud projects covering Plan-Build-Run lifecycle
  • Globally has 250+ cloud specialists with 100+ certifications
  • Cloud competencies cover infra, apps, data, and consulting
  • Provide deep consulting and technology in cloud and DevOps
  • RL products available on AWS and ServiceNow marketplace recognized globally as a specialist in “Infrastructure Automation”
  • Deep Architecture know-how on DevOps with microservices, containers, Well-Architected principals
  • Large enterprise customers with 10+M$ multi-year engagements successfully managed
  • Actively managing 7000+ cloud instances, 300+ Applications, annual 5.0+M$ cloud consumption, 20K+ annual tickets, 100+ automation BOTs, etc.

Need for a Comprehensive Approach to Cloud Adoption
Most enterprises today have their applications in the cloud or are aggressively migrating new ones for achieving the digital transformation of their business. However, the approach requires customers to think about the “Day-After” Cloud in order to avoid surprises on costs, security, and additional operations complexities. Having the right Cloud Management not only helps eliminate unwanted costs and compliance, but it also helps in optimal use of resources, ensuring “The Right Way” to use the cloud. Our “Automation- First Approach” helps minimize the manual intervention thereby, reducing manual prone errors and costs.

RL’s matured DevOps framework helps in ensuring the application development is done with accuracy, agility, and scale. Finally, to ensure this whole framework of Cloud Management, Automation and DevOps are continued in a seamless manner, you would need the right AIOps-driven Service Delivery Model. Hence, for any matured organizations, the below 4 themes become the foundation for using Cloud Management, Automation, DevOps, and AIOps.


Cloud Management
RL offers a unique methodology covering Plan-Build-Run lifecycle for Cloud Management, as explained in the diagram below.


Following are the basic steps for Cloud Management:

Step-1: Leverage
Built on best practices offered from native cloud providers and popular solution frameworks, RL methodology leverages the following for Cloud Management:

  • AWS Well-Architected Framework
  • AWS Management & Governance Lens
  • AWS Control Tower for large scale multi-account management
  • AWS Service Catalog for template-driven organization standard product deployments
  • Terraform for Infra as Code automation
  • AWS CloudFormation Templates
  • AWS Security Hub

Step-2: Augment
The basic Cloud Management best practices are augmented with unique products & frameworks built by RL based on our 50+ successful customer implementations covering the following:

  • Quickstart automation templates
  • AppInsights and ServiceOne – built on ITSM
  • RLCatalyst cloud portals – built on Service Catalog
  • Governance360 – built on Control Tower
  • RLCatalyst BOTS Automation Server

Step-3: Instill
Instill ongoing maturity and optimization using the following themes:

  • Four level compliance maturity model
  • Key Organization metrics across assets, cost, health, governance, and compliance
  • Industry-proven methodologies like HIPAA, SOC2, GDPR, NIST, etc.

For Cloud Management and Governance, RL has Solutions like Governance360, AWS Management and Governance lens, Cloud Migration using CloudEndure. Similarly, we have methodologies like “The Right Way” to use the cloud, and finally Product & Platform offerings like RLCatalyst AppInsights.

Automation
RL promotes an “Automation-First” approach for cloud adoption, covering all stages of the Plan-Build-Run lifecycle. We offer a mature automation framework called RLCatalyst BOTs and self-service cloud portals that allow full lifecycle automation.

In terms of deciding how to get started with automation, we help with an initial assessment model on “What Can Be Automated” (WCBA) that analyses the existing setup of cloud assets, applications portfolio, IT service management tickets (previous 12 months), and Governance/Security/Compliance models.


For the Automation theme, RL has Solutions like Automation Factory, University in a Box, Scientific Research on Cloud, 100+ BOTs library, custom solutions on Service WorkBench for AWS. Similarly, we have methodologies like Automation-First Approach, and finally Product & Platform offerings like RL BOTs automation Engine, Research Gateway, ServiceNow BOTs Connector, UiPath BOTs connector for RPA.

The following blogs explain in more detail our offerings on automation.



DevOps and Microservices
DevOps and microservices with containers are a key part of all modern architecture for scalability, re-use, and cost-effectiveness. RL, as a DevOps specialist, has been working on re-architecting applications and cloud migration across different segments covering education, pharma & life sciences, insurance, and ISVs. The adoption of containers is a key building block for driving faster product deliveries leveraging Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) models. Some of the key considerations followed by our teams cover the following for CI/CD with Containers and Kubernetes:


  • Role-based deployments
  • Explicit declarations
  • Environment dependent attributes for better configuration management
  • Order of execution and well-defined structure
  • Application blueprints
  • Repeatable and re-usable resources and components
  • Self contained artifacts for easy portability

The following diagram shows a standard blueprint we follow for DevOps:


For the DevOps & Microservices theme, RL has Solutions like CI/CD Cockpit solution, Cloud orchestration Portal, ServiceNow/AWS/Azure DevOps, AWS/Azure EKS. Similarly, we have methodologies like WOW DevOps, DevOps-driven Engineering, DevOps-driven Operations, and finally Product & Platform offerings like RL BOTs Connector.

AIOps and Service Delivery
RL brings in unique strengths across AIOps with IT Service Delivery Management on platforms like ServiceNow, Jira ServiceDesk and FreshService. By leveraging a platform-based approach that combines intelligent monitoring, service delivery management, and automation, we offer a mature architecture for achieving AIOps in a prescriptive manner with a combination of technology, tools, and methodologies. Customers have been able to deploy our AIOps solutions in 3 months and benefit from achieving 70% automation of inbound requests, reduction of noise on proactive monitoring by 80%, 3x faster fulfillment of Tickets & SLAs with a shift to a proactive DevOps-led organization structure.


For the AIOps & Service Delivery theme, RL has Solutions like AIOps Blueprint, ServiceNow++, End to End Automated Patch Management, Asset Management NOC & ServiceDesk. Similarly, we have methodologies like ServiceOne and finally Product & Platform offerings like ServiceOne with ServiceNow, ServiceOne with FreshService, RLCommand Center.

Summary
RL offers a combination of Solutions, Methodologies, and Product & Platform offerings covering the 360 spectrum of an enterprise Cloud & DevOps adoption across 4 different tracks covering Cloud Management, Automation, DevOps, and AIOps. The benefits of a technology-driven approach that leverages an “Automation-First” model has helped our customer reduce their IT spends by 30% over a period of 3 years with 3x faster product deliveries and real-time security & compliance.

To know more about our Cloud Centre of Excellence and how we can help you adopt Cloud “The Right Way” with best practices leveraging Cloud Management, Automation, DevOps, and AIOps, feel free to write to marketing@relevancelab.com

Reference Links
Considerations for AWS AMI Factory Design



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2022 Blogs, AWS Platform, Blog, Featured

Leveraging Technology + Consulting Specialization for Products and Solutions

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January, 2022

- 2022 Blogs, AWS Platform, Blog, Featured

Relevance Lab has been an AWS partner for almost a decade now. The primary transition in 2021 was moving from a pure consulting partner to a niche technology partner of AWS based on the strengths of two new ISV Product launches with RLCatalyst Research Gateway and RLCatalyst AppInsights.


  • RLCatalyst Research Gateway drives scientific research in AWS cloud, especially for Genomic Research and Analytics
  • RLCatalyst AppInsights is built on AWS Service Catalog AppRegistry and helps achieve an “Application-Centric” view for cloud assets, costs, health, and security to achieve Governance360

Customers have been demanding a “Solutions” approach from their partners that combine the strength of Products (own + third party) and Services to provide a unique business solution that removes friction and helps deliver key value. This is only possible by unifying the strength of Products + Services to create platform-based offerings delivered with a unique playbook for driving digital transformation.

The top-5 trends we observed in last one year regarding customer needs for cloud adoption are the following:


  • Cloud Adoption Acceleration
    • “Cloud Only” adoption to accelerate momentum of transitioning all internal systems, applications, and services to IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS solutions with an automation-first approach
  • DevOps Automation Led Operations
    • Critical focus on AIOps to ensure digital business operations are proactively managed with best practices on operations with Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and DevOps, leveraging ServiceNow platform
  • Frictionless Digital Workflows and Business Interactions
    • End-to-end business process integration with applications across self-developed products, PaaS platforms, and third-party SaaS solutions covering Shopify, Adobe Experience Manager, Demandware, Oracle Fusion, SOA/API Gateways, etc.
  • Cloud Data Lakes and Actionable Intelligence
    • Focus on agile business analytics with use of cloud-based data platforms leveraging Snowflake, Databricks, Azure Data Factory, AWS Data Lakes, etc., and integration with AI/ML tools with Sagemaker and RStudio
  • Security, Compliance, and Cost Management with focus on Governance360
    • Critical focus on security, governance, and cost optimization with a proactive model driven by a strong automation foundation

In this blog, we will primarily cover the strategic AWS partnership achievements of our products and solutions leveraged to help our customers use cloud “The Right Way”. The business benefits of this automation and platform led approach helped some of the key customers achieve significant outcomes, as explained below:


  • Speeded up product delivery cycles by 3x leveraging Agile + DevOps approach for Product Engineering and Application Migrations
  • Cut down cloud cost spending by 30% with better capacity utilization and effective cloud costs tracking at a granular level of business units, applications, customer usage patterns, and transaction costs optimization
  • Leveraging Automated Service Management achieved 70% handling of inbound tickets by smart BOTs using our product and RPA tools creating an Automation Factory
  • Proactive security and vulnerability management reducing the cost of compliance and reduced outages by 30%
  • Focus on effective data management and analytics with more real-time insights to business transactions and actionable intelligence leading to savings in excess of $300K annually for large supply chain use cases

Leveraging AWS cloud is a foundation enabler for all Relevance Lab products and solutions. The diagram below shows a high level overview of our AWS Ecosystem coverage.


The journey snapshot of the last 12 months is captured in the diagram below.


Relevance Lab and AWS Journey Highlights
To recap our key progress for this year, we are presenting a quick brief of the last 12 months in reverse chronological order.


  • December
    • Solid partnership with AWS APJ teams for go-to-market in the region for scientific research with RLCatalyst Research Gateway. There is a strong endorsement from AWS business teams and Solution Architects on RL solutions being a relevant offering for regional needs
    • Launch of Cloud Academy to train a new batch of people based on a platform-led model for the ability to rapidly create a large and competent workforce for cloud opportunities
    • CoE (Center of Excellence) teams pursuing new use cases High-Performance Computing (large and growing ecosystem) and AppStream-based training labs for education customers.
    • AppInsights product on ServiceNow emerging as a brand new product conceptualized and launched in 2021 with joint efforts with AWS Control Services group
  • November
    • Relevance Lab’s focus on addressing the Digital Transformation jigsaw puzzle with RLCatalyst and SPECTRA Platforms
    • ServiceOne and RLCatalyst Intelligent Automation Reference Architecture
    • SPECTRA Reference Architecture for agile analytics applications
    • Relevance Lab Hyperautomation approach to business optimization
    • Relevance Lab Service Maturity Model
  • October
    • Taking AWS cloud & ServiceNow solutions to multiple new prospects interested in understanding our offering across cloud management, automation, DevOps, and AIOps managed services
    • Showcasing RLCatalyst Research Gateway solutions to multiple public sector institutions, non-profit research centers, and health care providers
  • September
    • Key tracks of RL Cloud CoE covering Cloud Management, Automation, DevOps and AIOps shared
    • Summary of 10 year journey for RL Company and Product lifecycle shared
    • Launch of MyResearchCloud, An easy way to enable small and mid-sized customers to use the RLCatalyst Research Gateway SaaS product using “Bring Your Own Account”
    • RLCatalyst AppInsights launched on ServiceNow Store
  • August
    • RLCatalyst Platform, Solutions and Products consolidated offering for automation published
    • Automation-First approach for Plan-Build-Run of cloud adoption detailed
    • Maturity model for BOTs design published
    • RLCatalyst Genomics Pipeline work with Nextflow started
  • June-July
    • Joint efforts for the co-development on the open-source solutions for scientific research in cloud that emphasize on Health Informatics and Genomic processing space using RStudio
    • RLCatalyst Research Gateway solution has been reviewed and approved for ISV Path – a special program exclusively meant for the Independent Software Vendor (ISV) capabilities
    • Listing of Relevance Lab products and professional services on AWS Marketplace, which includes RLCatalyst Research Gateway SaaS and Governance360 solution built on AWS Control Tower
    • Selection of the AppInsights ServiceNow solution as the partner-built solution for AWS AppRegistry
    • Partnership with a specialist HIPAA governance solution provider for integrations into our Governance360 solution
    • Collaborating with the AWS recent solution announcement teams driving AWS Management and Governance Lens (part of AWS Well-Architected Framework prescribed offering)
  • May
    • RLCatalyst Research Gateway “test drive” by the first prospect with useful inputs to make the onboarding process much simpler and frictionless. Expectation to go from “No-Cloud” to “Full-cloud” experience for scientific researchers in less than 15 min (Uber-style)
    • Relevance Lab enters the elite AWS Service Delivery Program for niche partners for AWS Service Catalog
    • Relevance Lab SmartView, built on AWS AppRegistry new concept for dynamic application CMDB, getting significant appreciation and visibility from AWS Management and Governance teams
    • Ongoing co-development and collaboration with AWS Service Workbench groups to scale up RStudio on AWS Cloud with shared AWS ALB (Application Load Balancer) architecture
  • April
    • RLCatalyst Research Gateway common use cases implementation
    • “Automation-First” model for Cloud adoption elaborated
    • Common use cases for Cloud migration with focus on Application Migration
    • Original concept of SmartView Solution (later renamed AppInsights) for Application CMDB created.
  • March
    • “Automation-First” approach to use AWS cloud “The Right Way” detailed
    • Common use cases for scientific research published
    • AWS ISV Partner Path program adoption initiated
  • February
    • Research@Scale Architecture Blueprint created for an integrated offering combining strengths of Relevance Lab product, solutions and services
    • Conceptualizing Governance360 Solution built with AWS Control Tower customization framework
    • Started evaluation of AWS Service Workbench with BioInformatics Blueprint, RStudio, Sagemaker
    • ServiceOne Transition Blueprint created
  • January
    • Relevance Lab RLCatalyst Research Gateway product positioning in market with focus on “Blue Ocean Strategy” shared to create a niche offering
    • RLCatalyst Research Gateway launched as a SaaS product on AWS Marketplace
    • ServiceOne team worked on the Compliance as a Code Framework involving AWS Control Tower

RLCatalyst – Our Platform through 2021


ServiceOne: Our Cloud CoE Stories in 2021


Partnership Journey through Blogs, Webinar & Videos in 2021

It was a busy year at Relevance Lab. We published a number of blogs covering our solutions powered by our partnership with AWS. The following is a collection of blogs published on our website throughout the year:

Product Related



List of product knowledge videos on our YouTube channel.

Solutions and Consulting Related



We have also published blogs listed below on APN blog network in collaboration with AWS teams.



In addition, we successfully conducted a webinar with AWS and Dash Solutions. You can watch the recording here and download the presentation pdf here.

Summary
With the start of the new year 2022, we are very bullish about leveraging our AWS cloud Products and Solutions that help in driving Frictionless Business for our customers. There are 100000+ AWS Partners in the ecosystem worldwide, but Relevance Lab has created a unique differentiator and positioning leveraging the power of our IP Products as a key technology provider to complement our deep services competencies that are leading to tremendous momentum on new customer solutions.

Customers are continuing to face challenges with their business and supply chains in the pandemic era, and new business models are emerging that demand a new level of Agility + Automation. At Relevance Lab, we are constantly enhancing our offerings to help our customers navigate the Digital Transformation Puzzle and provide a unique value proposition with our global workforce across regions, critical investments in our IP platforms, and constant efforts on building deep competencies across cloud, data, and digital platforms.

To learn more about our cloud products, services and solutions, feel free to contact us at marketing@relevancelab.com.



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2021 Blog, AWS Platform, Blog, Featured

Helping Clients Adopt Cloud the Right Way – Our 2020 AWS Partnership Journey

By on

January, 2021

- 2021 Blog, AWS Platform, Blog, Featured

The year 2020 undoubtedly brought in unprecedented challenges with COVID-19 that required countries, governments, business and people respond in a proactive manner with new normal approaches. Certain businesses managed to respond to the dynamic macro environment with a lot more agility, flexibility and scale. Cloud computing had a dominant effect in helping businesses stay connected and deliver critical solutions. Relevance Lab scaled up its partnership with AWS to align with the new focus areas resulting in a significant increase in coverage of products, specialized solutions and customer impacts in the past 12 months compared to what has been achieved in the past.

AWS launched a number of new global initiatives in 2020 and in response to the business challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The following picture describes those initiatives in a nutshell.


Relevance Lab’s Focus areas have been very well aligned
Given the macro environment challenges, Relevance Lab quickly aligned their focus on helping customers deal with the emerging challenges and those areas were very complementary to AWS’ global initiatives and responses listed above.

Relevance Lab’s aligned its AWS solutions & services across four dominant themes and by leveraging RL’s own IP based platforms and deep cloud competencies. The following picture highlights those key initiatives and the native AWS products and services leveraged in the process.


Relevance Lab also made major strides in improving Initiative to progress along AWS Partnership Maturity Levels for Specialized Consulting and Key Product offerings. The following picture highlights the major achievements in 2020 in a nutshell.



AWS Specializations & Spotlights
Relevance Lab is a specialist cloud managed services company with deep expertise in Devops, Service Automation and ITSM integrations. It also has an RLCatalyst Platform built to support Automation across AWS Cloud and ITSM platforms. RLCatalyst family of solutions help in Self-service Cloud portals, IT service monitoring and automation through BOTs. While maintaining multi-sector client base, we are also uniquely focused with existing solutions for Higher Education, Public Sector and Research sector clients.


Spotlight-1: AWS Cloud Portals Solution
Relevance Lab have developed a family of cloud portal solutions on top of our RLCatalyst platform. Cloud Portal solutions aim to simplify AWS consumption using self-service models with emphasis on 1-click provisioning / lifecycle management, dashboard views of budget / cost consumption and modeling personas, roles & responsibilities with a sector context.


A unique feature of the above solutions is that they promote a hybrid model of consumption wherein users can bring their own AWS accounts (consumption accounts) under the framework of our cloud portal solution and benefit from being able to consume AWS for their educational and research needs in an easy self-service model.

The solutions can be consumed as either an Enterprise or as a SaaS license. In addition, the solutions will be made available on AWS Marketplace soon.


Spotlight-2: AWS Security Governance at Scale Framework
The framework and deployment architecture uses AWS Control Tower as the foundational service and other closely aligned and native AWS products and services such as AWS Service Catalog, AWS Security Hub, AWS Budgets, etc. and addresses subject areas such as multi-account management, cost management, security, compliance & governance.

Relevance Lab can assess, design and deploy or migrate to a fully secure AWS environment that lends itself to governance at scale. To encourage clients to adopt this journey, we have launched a 10-10 Program for AWS Security Governance that provides clients with an upfront blueprint of the entire migration or deployment process and end-state architecture so that they can make an informed decision


Spotlight-3: Automated User Onboarding/Offboarding for Enterprises Use Case
Relevance Lab is a unique partner that possesses deep expertise on AWS and ITSM platforms such as ServiceNow, freshservice, JIRA Service Desk, etc. The intersection of these platforms lends itself to relevant use cases for the industry. Relevance Lab has come up with a solution for automated User onboarding & offboarding in an enterprise context. This solution brings together multiple systems in a workflow model to accomplish user onboarding and offboarding tasks for an enterprise. It includes integration across HR systems, AWS Service Catalog and other services, ITSM platforms such as ServiceNow and assisted by Relevance Lab’s RLCatalyst BOTs engine to perform an end-to-end user onboarding/offboarding orchestration in an unassisted manner.


Key Customer Use Cases and Success Stories in 2020
Relevance Lab helped customers across verticals with growing momentum on Cloud adoption in the post COVID-19 situation to rewrite their digital solutions in adopting the new touchless interactions, remote distributed workforces and strong security governance solutions for enabling frictionless business.


AWS Best Practices – Blogs, Campaigns, Technical Write-ups
The following is a collection of knowledge articles and best practices published throughout the year related to our AWS centered solutions & services.

AWS Service Management


AWS Practice Solution Campaigns

AWS Governance at Scale

AWS Workspaces

RLCatalyst Product Details

AWS Infrastructure Automation

AWS E-Learning & Research Workbench Solutions

Cloud Networking Best Practices


Summary
The momentum of Cloud adoption in 2020 is quite likely to continue and grow in the new year 2021. Relevance Lab is a trusted partner in your cloud adoption journey driven by focus on following key specializations:

  • Cloud First Approach for Workload Planning
  • Cloud Governance 360 for using AWS Cloud the Right-Way
  • Automation Led Service Delivery Management with Self Service ITSM and Cloud Portals
  • Driving Frictionless Business and AI-Driven outcomes for Digital Transformation and App Modernization

To learn more about our services and solutions listed above or engage us in consultative discussions for your AWS and other IT service needs, feel free to contact us at marketing@relevancelab.com



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