What makes this term a little confusing is the terms "managed" and "services" can refer to different things.

• AWS provides many different "managed services" like S3 (data storage), EC2 (compute), etc. From the AWS perspective, they are managing the underlying physical equipment and architecture. You never have to swap a new hard drive or plug in a power cable. It's managed!
• From an AWS services provider —someone who sets up and maintains services like EC2 or S3 for their customers—, they - the service provider - are also managing the services. If an EC2 instance stops working, they are the ones who check on it and fix it. Therefore they are providing managed services.

Confused yet?

What is a managed service provider?

Perhaps a metaphor will be helpful. What AWS provides could be thought of as a car that will never break down. Any underlying hardware that does fail, is automatically replaced. However, cars aren't meant to sit around, they are meant to go places! Within this metaphor, an AWS services provider serves as the driver: checking the map, filling up the gas tank, and keeping their eyes on the road. Activities like monitoring, cost management, and performance tuning are all activities that AWS won't provide and need someone else (an AWS service provider) to take care of.

Do I need a managed services provider?

Extending the metaphor, you might ask yourself: "do I need a driver?" The answer is no. There is no license requirement to start an AWS service, no policeman on the road to stop you, and it's easy to get started. However, it's also easy to get in trouble! While you won't crash into anyone, many things can happen when you go it alone on AWS:

• Your website or application can simply stop working
• You can have performance/speed issues
• Data can go missing
• You can end up spending your time when you should be working on other things
• You can end up paying a lot more than you intended

Perhaps you've already run into one of the issues mentioned above, or you'd like to prevent it from happening. That's where AWS managed services from a certified AWS Consulting Partner, like Metal Toad, can have tremendous value.

The AWS Shared Responsibility Model with Metal Toad

Metal Toad helps our customers with ALL or some of the customers' shared responsibilities in the AWS Shared Responsibility Model.

Why work with a professional managed services provider?

Whether you are currently in the cloud or looking to migrate one or more workloads to the cloud, most companies can benefit from working with a professional managed services provider in one of the following areas:

1. Picking the right services
2. Optimizing costs via architecture
3. Reducing costs via reseller agreements

1. Picking the right AWS services

Not all AWS services are created equal, and whether you are looking at compute (AWS EC2 vs. AWS Lambda), file storage (S3 vs. Glacier) options have different price points and use cases. Glacier is great for long-term storage, for example, but would be terrible for workloads that require rapid response times. When architecting an AWS Cloud workload picking the right service is critical - end we can help.

2. Optimizing costs via architecture

Beyond improving performance, architecting things in the right way is critical to cost control. AWS - and all the major cloud providers - allow for infinite scalability, which also means potentially infinite costs. Pick the wrong storage or architect a workload so things are moving in and out of the Cloud and egress fees alone may set you up to spend much more money than you need to. Get a second pair of eyes or delegate the architecture entirely. Metal Toad can help!

3. Reducing costs via reseller agreements

Do you have everything architected properly, but are still wishing you could save money on your cloud costs? The answer might be as simple as reaching out to a professional managed services partner like Metal Toad. With our existing relationship with AWS, we can get the exact same services for less via our scale. Find out today how much money you can save!