AWS Done Right Without the Bill Surprise
We design, build and run AWS workloads the boring way: right-sized, tagged, monitored, backed up, and inside a budget you actually approved. No 14-service architecture for a CRUD app, no NAT gateway eating $400 a month for no reason, no $9,000 surprise on the first of next month. Senior AWS engineers who've cleaned up other people's messes and know where the meter is running.
You don't have an AWS problem.
You have an unsupervised AWS problem.
Most AWS pain isn't AWS — it's the layers of click-ops, dead resources, copy-pasted tutorials, and architecture decisions made by whoever was on call that night. We've audited hundreds of accounts and the same five things show up every time. We fix them, and we leave the account in a state where the next engineer can actually understand it.
The bill keeps climbing and nobody can explain it
Untagged resources, idle RDS instances at production size, gp2 volumes that should be gp3, three NAT gateways doing the work of one, CloudWatch logs retained forever. Death by a thousand line items.
Click-ops architecture nobody can reproduce
Built in the console two years ago by a contractor. No Terraform, no CloudFormation, no diagrams. If the region went down tomorrow, recovery is a guessing game and a prayer.
IAM is a wide-open buffet
Everyone has AdministratorAccess, root account uses an email no one owns, MFA isn't enforced, access keys from 2021 are still active. One phishing email from a very expensive Tuesday.
What You Actually Get
No vague deliverables. Here's exactly what lands in your hands.
Infrastructure as code, in your repo
Terraform or CDK, modules you can read, state in S3 with locking, plan/apply through CI. The whole account reproducible from git, not from memory.
A right-sizing and savings plan
Compute Optimizer, Cost Explorer, Trusted Advisor and our own audits combined into one report with line-item dollar savings and a 30/60/90 day execution plan.
A locked-down landing zone
AWS Organizations, SCPs, Control Tower or equivalent, separate accounts for prod / staging / sandbox / logs, SSO via IAM Identity Center, MFA enforced, root locked away.
Real observability, not just CloudWatch defaults
Dashboards, alarms wired to a real on-call channel, log retention rules that don't bankrupt you, and runbooks for the alerts that actually fire.
A Real AWS Engineering Team
Six roles you get on every Pillai Infotech AWS engagement — not one generalist pretending to be all of them.
Solutions Architect
Designs the landing zone, the network topology, the data flow. Knows when Aurora beats RDS, when Fargate beats EKS, and when none of it is justified for a 50-user app.
DevOps / Platform Engineer
Writes the Terraform, runs the CI/CD, owns the build/deploy pipeline. Can debug a stuck CloudFormation stack at 2AM without crying.
FinOps Lead
Owns the bill. Tags everything, builds the chargeback view, finds the savings, negotiates Savings Plans and Reserved Instances based on real usage, not guesses.
Cloud Security Engineer
IAM, SCPs, GuardDuty, Security Hub, KMS, secrets rotation, VPC flow logs. Has read the AWS Well-Architected security pillar and applies it without religion.
SRE / On-Call Lead
Designs the SLOs, the alerting, the runbooks. Owns incident response. The engineer who cares whether your alarm actually wakes someone up.
Data & Backup Architect
RDS / Aurora / DynamoDB / S3 lifecycle, backup policies, cross-region replication, restore drills. Because "we have backups" and "we have tested restores" are different sentences.
You See Everything. In Real Time.
Every Pillai Infotech project comes with a dedicated client dashboard. Kanban boards, live logs, test results, meeting notes — it's all visible the moment it happens. No status-report theatre, no "we'll get back to you", no surprises at the demo. You work with us like you work with your own team.
Kanban Board, Live
Every epic, every story, every task — visible on your dashboard. Drag, comment, reprioritize. It's the same board our team works from.
Documented Everything
Every decision, spec, API contract, and architecture diagram lives in the dashboard. Searchable, versioned, linked to the tasks they shaped.
Live Logs & Test Results
Build logs, deployment logs, test suite results — streamed to your dashboard the moment they run. You never have to ask "did the build pass?"
Meetings → Tasks, Automatically
Every meeting is recorded, transcribed, and every action point is auto-converted into a tracked task assigned to the right person. Nothing gets lost between calls.
Sprint Burndown & Velocity
See exactly how much work is done, how much remains, and our velocity over time. If a sprint is slipping, you see it the same moment we do.
Comment, Approve, Decide — In-Place
Comment on any task, approve designs, sign off on specs, and raise blockers directly in the dashboard. Everything tied to the work, not buried in email threads.
AWS Workloads We Run Without Drama
We build for the workload, not the certification slide deck.
🌐 Web & API platforms
ALB / API Gateway in front, ECS Fargate or Lambda behind, RDS or Aurora for state, CloudFront for delivery. Boring, cheap, scales.
📦 Containerised microservices
ECS or EKS, sized to the team's actual ability to operate it. We pick ECS by default — EKS only when you've earned it.
⚡ Serverless event pipelines
Lambda, EventBridge, SQS, Step Functions, DynamoDB. For workloads that are bursty, scheduled, or genuinely event-driven — not because serverless is fashionable.
🗃️ Data lakes & analytics
S3 + Glue + Athena + Lake Formation, partitioned and lifecycle-managed. Redshift only when the workload justifies it. QuickSight or your BI tool of choice on top.
🤖 AI / ML workloads
Bedrock, SageMaker, GPU EC2 with spot pricing, model artefacts in S3, inference behind API Gateway. Right-sized so a single rogue endpoint can't drain the budget overnight.
🏢 Lift-and-shift migrations
On-prem or other-cloud workloads moved to AWS using Application Migration Service, then progressively re-platformed. Honest about what should and shouldn't move.
The AWS Stack We Use
We use the boring services first. The exotic ones only when they earn their keep.
Compute & Containers
Data & Storage
Security & Governance
Delivery & Ops
A Six-Stage AWS Delivery Process
Designed to leave your account in a state your own team can take over on day 91.
Account & Bill Audit
Read-only access for one week. We map every resource, every cost driver, every IAM principal, and produce a written audit with prioritised findings.
Landing Zone & Guardrails
Multi-account setup, SSO, SCPs, baseline logging and security. The foundation that stops the next mistake from being a $10k one.
Architecture Design
A target architecture in writing, with diagrams, trade-offs, and a cost model. You see the monthly bill before we provision a thing.
Build in IaC
Terraform or CDK modules, pull-requested into your repo. Plan output reviewed before every apply. No console clicks.
Cutover & Validation
Migration windows, smoke tests, rollback plan rehearsed. SLOs and alarms wired up before traffic hits.
Handover or Run
Either we hand the keys back with documentation and training, or we keep operating it on a managed-services retainer. Your call, not ours.
Three Ways to Engage
Pick the engagement that matches the state of your AWS account today.
AWS Audit Sprint
Two-week deep dive into your account: cost, security, reliability, IaC readiness. You get a written report and a prioritised action list — no obligation to use us for the fix.
- Cost + security + reliability audit
- Right-sizing and savings model
- Written report you own
Build or Re-Platform
Fixed-scope engagement to design and ship a new workload, or re-platform an existing one onto a clean landing zone with full IaC.
- Fixed scope, fixed price
- Typical: 6–14 weeks
- Full Terraform/CDK handover
Managed AWS Retainer
Ongoing operation: on-call, patching, cost reviews, security posture, capacity planning. We run it, you run the business.
- 24/7 on-call available
- Monthly cost & posture review
- Quarterly architecture review
Honest Answers to AWS Reality Questions
The questions every smart buyer asks before signing. Here's what we tell them.
Can you really cut our AWS bill 30%+?
On a typical un-audited account, yes — 25–45% in the first 90 days is the usual range, with most of it from right-sizing, gp2 to gp3, idle resource cleanup, log retention, and Savings Plans on the workloads that actually have a baseline. We won't promise it without seeing the bill, and we won't cut anything without your sign-off.
ECS or EKS?
ECS unless you've already got a platform team that lives and breathes Kubernetes. EKS is more powerful and more expensive in operator time. Most teams that pick EKS first regret it within a year. We'll tell you which one fits your team, not which one looks better on a CV.
Should we use Lambda for everything?
No. Lambda is brilliant for event-driven, bursty, glue-code workloads. It's the wrong choice for sustained high-throughput APIs, long-running jobs, or anything where cold starts matter. We mix Lambda and Fargate based on the workload shape and the cost model.
Terraform or CDK?
Terraform if your team already uses it, or if you're multi-cloud. CDK if you're all-in on AWS and your team writes TypeScript or Python comfortably. Both are fine. The wrong answer is "neither" — that's click-ops, and we don't do click-ops.
How do you handle root account and IAM?
Root gets a strong password, hardware MFA, no access keys, and goes in a safe. Day-to-day access is via IAM Identity Center (SSO) with permission sets, MFA enforced, and SCPs at the org level blocking root usage and dangerous regions. Access keys only where automation truly needs them, and rotated.
Can you migrate us off another cloud or on-prem?
Yes. We do honest migration assessments first — sometimes the answer is "don't move that workload, it's fine where it is". When migration is the right call, we use AWS Application Migration Service for lift-and-shift and re-platform progressively after.
What about multi-region and DR?
Most workloads do not need active-active multi-region — it doubles your bill and your bug surface. We design for the recovery objective you actually need: backup-restore, pilot light, warm standby, or active-active. We'll tell you the cost difference and let you choose with eyes open.
Do you handle compliance — SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI?
Yes. AWS has the certifications and the BAA; we set up the account so you can pass the audit on top: CloudTrail to a locked logging account, GuardDuty, Security Hub, KMS, encryption everywhere, access reviews, evidence collection. Auditors get a clean account, not a story.
Who owns the AWS account?
You do. Always. Account in your company name, billing in your name, root in your safe, IaC in your GitHub org. We work inside it as a delegated principal. If we walked away tomorrow, nothing breaks and nothing is hostage.
Can you sign an NDA before we share details?
Always. NDA before the first call. We're happy to do the audit through read-only access only, with no write permissions, until trust is earned.