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AWS Premier Partner · Managed Services

An AWS retainer where the product is engineering practice, not the headcount.

Armakuni Managed Services is four engineering practices on one retainer: Automation, Observability, Cost, Quality. Your AWS bill goes down. Your DORA metrics go up. Your team learns the practices by working alongside ours.

Four AK Way practices on one retainer. DORA-tracked from week one.

Trusted by teams shipping on AWS

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The Core Insight

Your AWS bill went up last quarter. The engineering practices that would have caught the drift never made it into the retainer.

A standard retainer optimises inside the practices that produced the drift. We replace the practices. Automation cuts toil, observability cuts MTTR, FinOps reverses bill drift, quality keeps deploys safe. One retainer, DORA-tracked from week one.

95%
Faster Lead Time

Median lead-time-for-changes reduction across recent Managed Services engagements. DORA-tracked, sprint-by-sprint.

Armakuni MS outcomes
70%
Faster Recovery

Median time-to-recovery reduction. Observability instrumentation lands in week one. By week eight, MTTR has dropped.

Armakuni MS outcomes
40%
Bill Reduction

Median first-quarter AWS bill reduction. FinOps instrumentation, right-sizing, savings-plan tuning. Per-team attribution surfaced to the CFO.

Armakuni FinOps
The Reframe

We don't run your ticket queue. We replace the engineering practice that filled it.

Four AK Way practices on one retainer. Automation cuts toil. Observability lets your team find the cause without paging us. FinOps reverses bill drift. Quality keeps deploys safe.

The practices are infrastructure you keep. Runbooks, dashboards, IaC, on-call rotation, post-mortem templates. Deployed into your AWS account under your IAM, your governance, your audit trail. When the retainer ends, your team has the playbook.

AK Way Managed

Four engineering practices. Each one moves an operational metric we report to your CFO.

AK Way Managed is a retainer where the product is the engineering practice, not the headcount. Four practices, one retainer, sprint-by-sprint DORA tracking.

Automation
Observability
Cost Discipline
Quality Discipline
Practice 01

Automation

Toil is the work that fills the queue. Automation removes it. Runbooks become Step Functions. Tickets become triggers. Every recurring intervention gets automated by week four.

Practice 02

Observability

Your team can't fix what they can't see. Observability instruments every service in week one. CloudWatch, X-Ray, custom dashboards per team. MTTR drops because the investigation step disappears.

Practice 03

Cost Discipline

AWS bills drift up unless someone is watching. Armakuni FinOps lands per-team attribution, right-sizing recommendations, savings plan tuning, anomaly alerts. The CFO gets a monthly view of who spent what.

Practice 04

Quality Discipline

Every deploy carries a regression risk. Quality practice lands change-failure tracking, canary patterns, automated rollback, post-mortem culture. Quality goes up. Deploy frequency goes up. Both at the same time.

What the Retainer Includes

Four practices on AWS-native primitives. Your team learns the ones they didn't already know on the way in.

The retainer wires AWS primitives you are already paying for into one operational surface. No new runtime. No new vendor. The practices are the product.

Automated Runbooks
Automated Runbooks

Step Functions encoding the runbooks. Lambda for the actions. Every recurring intervention automated.

Automation
CloudWatch + X-Ray
CloudWatch + X-Ray

Observability across every service. Custom dashboards per team. MTTR drops because investigation disappears.

Observability
AWS FinOps + Cost Explorer
AWS FinOps + Cost Explorer

Per-team cost attribution. Right-sizing recommendations. Savings plan tuning. Monthly CFO report.

Cost discipline
CodeDeploy + CodePipeline
CodeDeploy + CodePipeline

Canary deployments by default. Automated rollback on observability signal. Change-failure tracked sprint-by-sprint.

Quality discipline
Bedrock + GuardDuty + Config
Bedrock + GuardDuty + Config

Continuous compliance evidence. Drift detection. Per-control AWS Config rules. Audit Manager-ready.

Compliance
Q Developer Operations
Q Developer Operations

AI-assisted incident triage and runbook generation. The retainer team uses it. Your team learns to use it.

AI-assisted ops
What customers say
A Leading smart kitchen appliance brand
Steady engineering partnership
Case study
Ralph Newhouse, ceo at Leading smart kitchen appliance brand, United States
Product Manager, CHEF iQ
Leading smart kitchen appliance brand, United States · Jonathan Shieh

We were impressed by Armakuni's level of engagement and the personal attention we received throughout the entire project. Their regular updates, demos, and willingness to brainstorm made it clear how invested they were in the work. It was enlightening to see their process and approach. Not only were they enthusiastic about the technical challenges of the problem, but they also constantly kept the end user experience in mind. Overall, it has been a pleasure working with Armakuni!

One of the largest cinema networks in the U.S.
Speed and partnership
Case study
Sean Gamble Presitent, ceo at One of the largest cinema networks in the U.S.
Senior Manager, Application Integration, One of the largest cinema networks in the U.S.
One of the largest cinema networks in the U.S. · Matt Suckel

Kudos to Armakuni for demonstrating the speed, precision, and partnership needed to turn a high-speed challenge into a success story.

A leading U.S. drug testing network operator
Cross-domain engineering
Case study
Managing Director, DIMS Product Suite, A leading U.S. drug testing network operator Services
A leading U.S. drug testing network operator · Vivek Jha

A leading U.S. drug testing network operator needed a team that had expertise across different domains and was enthusiastic enough to iterate on a moonshot project. [Armakuni] had a long term vision… I wanted people who were willing to say 'yes' and deal with the questions. Armakuni came highly recommended by AWS.

Award-winning LMS provider for enterprises and mid-size organizations
C-Suite trust on a regulated platform
Case study
Co-Founder and Chairman of Award-winning LMS provider for enterprises and mid-size organizations, cofounder at Award-winning LMS provider for enterprises and mid-size organizations
AWS Account Manager
Award-winning LMS provider for enterprises and mid-size organizations · David Nacson

The Armakuni team demonstrated an impressive ability to earn customer trust and deliver against lofty expectations with the customer C-Suite. Ruben and team maintained consistent communication with the customer, even after initial projects were put on hold for half a year.

The Payoff · Retainer Quarter Timeline

One quarter to four practices live.|DORA metrics moving from week one.

Median outcomes across recent Managed Services engagements where teams ran the four AK Way practices on the Armakuni retainer.

Week 1
Observability live
Dashboards instrumented, baseline measured
Week 4
Automation shipping
First runbooks converted to Step Functions
Week 8
FinOps active
Per-team attribution + first cost-saves
Week 12
DORA lift visible
Lead time, MTTR, deploy freq all moving
How the Retainer Works

Two engagement shapes.|Pick the one that matches your operational maturity.

Full retainer · Quarterly

AK Way Managed (Full)

Four practices, one retainer team, embedded in your AWS account. Automation, Observability, Cost, Quality. DORA metrics tracked sprint-by-sprint and reported to the CFO. Full AK Way playbook transferred to your team over twelve weeks.

Output: a working operational practice in your AWS account, with your engineers operating it.

AK Way Managed Full: four-practice retainer pod embedded in your AWS account

What AK Way Managed (Full) delivers

Four practices, one bill. Automation, Observability, Cost, Quality. No add-on SOW for each.
DORA-tracked. Lead time, change-failure rate, MTTR, deploy frequency. Reported to your CFO every month.
Yours after the retainer. Runbooks, dashboards, IaC, on-call rotation, post-mortem templates. All transferred to your team.
Single-practice engagement · 6-12 weeks

AK Way Managed (Practice)

Pick one practice. Land it on a fixed-scope engagement. FinOps for the bill that's drifting. Observability for the MTTR that won't come down. Quality for the regression rate. Each practice runs as a six-to-twelve week scoped sprint.

Output: one practice live in your AWS account, plus the path to add the other three.

AK Way Managed Practice: single-practice sprint engagement

What AK Way Managed (Practice) delivers

Fixed scope, fixed price. No retainer commitment. Land one practice, see the result, decide on the next.
Practice-as-product. Each practice ships with playbook, dashboards, IaC. The artefacts stay regardless of what comes next.
Path to full retainer. Single-practice engagements convert to full retainer with prior work credited.
Workshops · Try the practice before the retainer

Two workshops, half day each.|See an AK Way practice run on your real AWS account.

FinOps workshop
FinOps Workshop

Half-day workshop on your real AWS bill. Per-team attribution, right-sizing analysis, savings plan recommendations. Walk away with a sized opportunity for first-quarter cost reduction.

Half dayFree
HALF DAYFREEON YOUR AWS ACCOUNT
Observability workshop
Observability Workshop

Half-day workshop instrumenting one of your services with the AK Way observability stack. CloudWatch, X-Ray, custom dashboards.

Walk away with
  • The service instrumented
  • Your team trained
Half dayFree
HALF DAYFREEHANDS-ON
Recent Results

Retainers that moved DORA metrics.|Three customers. Specific outcomes.

More customer stories
Continue exploring
AWS Premier Tier Services Partner

Named on the SOW. Specialized where it matters.

Active AWS competencies and service-delivery designations behind managed retainers.

AWS
Premier
GenAI
Comp.
Migration
Comp.
DevOps
Comp.
Well-Arch.
Partner
EKS
Delivery
Lambda
Delivery
CFN
Delivery
+30 more
Migration and Modernization DevOps Consulting Competency Amazon EKS Delivery AWS Lambda Delivery AWS CloudFormation Delivery
Common questions

What CIOs ask before booking a Discovery Sprint.

How long is a typical engagement?
AK Way Managed Full runs as a quarterly retainer with all four practices (Automation, Observability, FinOps, Quality) in place from week one, sized to your AWS footprint. AK Way Managed Practice is a single-practice sprint of six to twelve weeks at a fixed fee. Most customers start with one practice and add the others after the first quarter.
What does the team shape look like?
Full retainer pod is six engineers across the four practices: senior FinOps engineer, two senior platform engineers, observability specialist, release engineer, AK Way practice owner. Single-practice sprints run a focused two-to-three-person pod for the duration. Sized to your AWS footprint and incident volume, not bench utilization.
Do we need to already be on AWS?
Yes. AK Way Managed is AWS-native. If you are not on AWS yet, run a Migration engagement first; we then take over operational ownership. The runbooks, observability dashboards, and FinOps reporting all live in your AWS account under your IAM.
How does pricing work?
Full retainer is a quarterly fixed monthly fee with declared capacity. Single-practice engagements are fixed scope at a fixed sprint fee. No multi-year commit; renewal is decided each quarter on whether the practice is moving the metrics it owns.
What does success look like?
Median outcomes from recent retainer pods: AWS bill reduction in the high teens within the first quarter (FinOps practice), MTTR halved within ninety days (Observability), automated runbooks covering the top ten incident classes by week six (Automation), and DORA metrics moving sprint-by-sprint with the CFO-facing report. Tracked against your baseline from day one.
Discovery

Book an ops review with an engineer.|Two hours, on your real AWS account.

Two-hour ops review where an Armakuni engineer audits your AWS bill, observability posture, and DORA metrics. We propose a single-practice engagement (FinOps, Observability, Automation, or Quality) sized to your shape.

For your CTO/COO
Book a Discovery Sprint
For your engineering lead
Contact us

Your first conversation is with the solution architect who would run the engagement.