Insights

Engineering guidance for better cloud cost, security, and operations.

Field notes from ARCO's cloud engineers for finance, platform, security and delivery teams operating production AWS and GCP environments.

Featured analysisCloud Cost Optimization8 min read

AWS cost optimization audit: access, deliverables, timeline, and outcomes

What a credible AWS cost assessment should analyze and what buyers should expect to receive from the engagement.

Read the analysis Jul 18, 2026 · Islam Ali

Inside this analysis

Begin with scoped read-only access

Analyze more than idle resources

Deliver prioritized economics

Measure realized savings

AWS Landing Zones9 min read

AWS Control Tower vs. Landing Zone Accelerator: how to choose

A practical comparison of AWS Control Tower and Landing Zone Accelerator for multi-account governance, security, compliance, and platform operations.

Jul 18, 2026 · Islam Ali

AWS Architecture8 min read

AWS Well-Architected Review checklist for SaaS platforms

The evidence, questions, and engineering decisions SaaS teams should prepare before an AWS Well-Architected review.

Jul 18, 2026 · Islam Ali

Cloud Security & Compliance10 min read

SOC 2 on AWS: engineering controls teams should prepare

A practical overview of identity, logging, encryption, vulnerability, change, backup, and incident controls commonly relevant to SOC 2 readiness on AWS.

Jul 18, 2026 · Islam Ali

DevOps Consulting7 min read

Managed DevOps vs. hiring an in-house DevOps engineer

How to compare managed DevOps, consultants, and internal hiring across ownership, speed, cost, continuity, and technical depth.

Jul 18, 2026 · Islam Ali

Migration & Modernization10 min read

AWS migration assessment checklist: discovery through cutover

A structured checklist for inventory, dependencies, security, data, landing zones, testing, cutover, rollback, and post-migration operations.

Jul 18, 2026 · Islam Ali

Email Infrastructure5 min read

Improving SES deliverability with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC the right way

A practical guide to building more trusted and reliable email delivery for transactional and product-driven communication workflows.

May 6, 2026 · ARCO Editorial Team

Reliability Engineering5 min read

How to improve monitoring without creating more alert noise

Why better observability starts with signal quality, service-level thinking, and alerting discipline rather than more dashboards alone.

May 5, 2026 · ARCO Editorial Team

Migration & Modernization6 min read

A cloud migration readiness checklist for teams leaving legacy hosting

A practical checklist covering dependencies, security, data, landing zones, testing, cutover, rollback, and operations before an AWS or GCP migration.

May 4, 2026 · ARCO Editorial Team

CI/CD & DevOps8 min read

Zero-downtime deployment patterns for business-critical workloads

A breakdown of release approaches, rollback thinking, and deployment design patterns that improve confidence in production delivery.

May 3, 2026 · ARCO Editorial Team

Cloud Security & Compliance7 min read

What teams get wrong when preparing cloud environments for HIPAA and SOC 2

How to think about IAM, logging, encryption, secrets management, and operational controls in a way that is practical and audit-aware.

May 2, 2026 · ARCO Editorial Team

Cloud Cost Optimization6 min read

5 common AWS cost optimization mistakes growing teams keep making

A practical look at the cloud waste patterns that repeatedly show up in AWS environments and how to correct them without risking production stability.

May 1, 2026 · ARCO Editorial Team

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