CoPilot Cloud Optimization and Governance

A More Predictable, Secure, and Responsive Cloud

The Platform and its Benefits

CoPilot is a subscription-based offering combining tooling and insights with ongoing remediation and configuration services, all designed to optimize cloud environments.

Regardless of your maturity with the cloud, CoPilot can help you reach your desired state:

Maintain cloud control with security and compliance
Get assistance with configuration and deployments
Gain visibility and continually optimize cloud usage

Configuration

The CoPilot Cloud Optimization and Governance Platform encodes industry best practice, and delivers these benefits:

Benchmarks to gauge how well you’re performing against best practice
Live dashboard and real-time alerts to help you quickly respond to anomalies
Access to CoPilot experts via online chat
Consistent cadence of Cloud Engineer engagement
Customizable reporting and rule-sets

Tier Options

Cloud Insights

Pair our tooling with certified Cloud Engineers to review your environment for improvements.

Tooling, Alerting, and IP

Provide visibility into cost, billing, inventory, availability, utilization, and security.

Enablement Hours

Allow certified AHEAD Cloud Engineers to work on remediation, configuration, and hands-on technical tasks.

Creating a More Predictable, Secure, Public Cloud

Improved regulatory compliance and performance monitoring, plus significant savings on AWS

Solution Architecture

AHEAD has done the extensive research on the right tools for monitoring cloud billing, inventory, security, and compliance.

We developed our own proprietary message bus to make sure what we’re monitoring can easily be integrated into ServiceNow for incident management. And we employ Slack for ChatOps support and access to AHEAD cloud experts. Access to all of this – reporting, monitoring, and incident management – is delivered through a single sign-on portal.

Security and Compliance Monitoring

CoPilot helps monitor your environment for proper controls and configurations along with monitoring changes made either manually or programmatically.

The following frameworks are supported with near-real time alerting and ticket creation to provide your team visibility into the environment:

CIS
HIPAA
PCI-DSS 3.2
NIST 800-53
GDPR

This is exactly what we need to do with the best of breed tools. But we don’t have the time or resource to constantly evaluate, configure, tune, or troubleshot them – let alone monitor all of the data they generate.

CIO, Information Services Company

Enablement Hours

CoPilot Enablement Hours allow certified cloud engineers to work on remediation, configuration, and hands-on technical tasks. Monthly hours are available in buckets based on customer requirements, and roll over from month to month during the term.

Some common examples of how CoPilot clients use Enablement Hours:

CloudFormation template authoring
S3 lifecycle policy management
Dashboard customization
IAM policy development
Automation via Lambda
Config rule creation
Tagging

FAQ’s

What types of issues can CoPilot help resolve?

CoPilot provides an integrated toolset to monitor and report on inventory, billing, security and compliance for AWS. The service gives you access to AHEAD’s collective expertise and knowledge to remediate and improve your environment through AHEAD Enablement hours, designed time each month for CoPilot engineers to help your team.

How do I access the CoPilot service?

Access to reporting, monitoring, and incident management is available through the CoPilot single sign-on portal. You will be assigned credentials to access the CoPilot portal as part of the onboarding process.

How long does it take to be onboarded to CoPilot?

Initial onboarding generally takes only a couple of hours. AHEAD leverages AWS CloudFormation templates to streamline the onboarding process. Further customization of alerts, compliance bundles, and other metrics will occur over the first several weeks.

Do I retain ownership over my AWS account(s) and data?

You retain ownership of the AWS account(s) and have full rights and privileges to control the environment. Access is maintained by your administrators.

Can the CoPilot team see my data?

You always retain the ability to control and audit who is accessing each AWS account. AHEAD operates under the principle of least privilege. If you grant AHEAD access to the environment, the CoPilot team uses cross-account IAM roles to access AWS resources as needed. Additionally, the CoPilot tooling does not make any automated modifications to your environment.

Can the CoPilot team help me with questions about AWS services or guidance around which applications to use?

Yes. The CoPilot team is available to provide guidance about services being used as well as improvements to your environment. CoPilot engineers have extensive experience using AWS services and assist you in creating a well-architected environment. Additionally, our team is able to provide education and advice about new services and how they can optimize your environment.

When is the CoPilot team available?

CoPilot engineers are available during business hours, Monday through Friday, 9:00AM – 5:00PM (Eastern), except holidays.

Does CoPilot manage my applications or provide development support for my workloads?

CoPilot focuses on helping you optimize, secure, and gain insight into your AWS infrastructure. Your team will be responsible for managing any application-level requirements for the workloads.

Does CoPilot for AWS include Consolidated Billing?

Yes. AHEAD provides Consolidated Billing as part of CoPilot for AWS. You will receive one bill for CoPilot inclusive of AWS charges across all linked AWS accounts. AHEAD does not mark-up AWS charges — you pay the rates that are published on the AWS website for your usage. Our clients find that receiving an invoice from AHEAD for all accounts streamlines billing when multiple stakeholders deploy services on AWS.

Does AHEAD provide any chargeback for specific departments or applications?

Yes. AHEAD can provide custom chargeback/showback reporting to meet your needs in addition to budgets and billing alerts based on tags and applications.

Top Partners

AHEAD is an AWS Premier Consulting partner, having attained the AWS DevOps, AWS Storage, and AWS EUC Competencies. The designation recognizes AHEAD as an AWS Partner Network (APN) member who delivers both technical proficiency and proven client success with AWS.

Our Partners

AHEAD is a Gold Cloud Platform Competency partner with Microsoft Azure. To achieve this status, businesses must submit customer references that demonstrate successful projects, meet a performance commitment, and pass technology and sales assessments.

Our Partners

AHEAD uses Okta solutions to provide SSO and MFA capabilities for customers who are operationalizing public cloud services and who want to integrate them with existing enterprise security standards.

Our Partners

AHEAD is an Elite Status Partner for both Sales and Service, thanks to our demonstrated success in selling and implementing the ServiceNow platform, and maintaining high customer satisfaction scores.

Our Partners

AHEAD leverages Slack for ChatOps to connect our clients and engineers. ChatOps allows clients to ask AHEAD cloud experts questions and receive quick clarification about features and services.

Our Partners

AHEAD partners with more than 60 technology providers to provide the essential building blocks for your digital business platform.

Our Partners