Background
A healthcare business operating digital clinics in Australia was preparing to scale their user base from ~5,000 to 20,000. With expansion on the horizon, they wanted assurance that their AWS environment was secure, compliant, and cost-efficient. Their CTO knew their infrastructure required review — especially with sensitive medical data in play — but lacked dedicated internal expertise to carry out a detailed security and architecture assessment.
The WAFR Lite Engagement
Wolk conducted a no-obligation WAFR Lite session with the CTO and his team, mapping out their AWS environment in real time. This process immediately surfaced tangible value:
- Critical security gaps such as unencrypted databases, exposed ports, and excessive IAM permissions.
- Cost inefficiencies, including multiple unused load balancers, that could be remediated without impacting performance.
- Scalability blockers, like reliance on Elastic Beanstalk and duplicated VPCs that would struggle under increased demand.
The session built instant credibility with both the client and AWS, demonstrating how quickly risk could be reduced and spend aligned to best practices.
Key Outcomes from WAFR Lite
- Identified over 20 immediate actions to reduce security risk and streamline operations.
- Demonstrated savings (e.g., reducing load balancer spend), which freed budget to reinvest in advanced AWS services.
- Outlined a digital transformation roadmap with stronger governance, monitoring, and compliance guardrails.
From Insight to Partnership
Following the WAFR Lite, this healthcare business recognized the value of ongoing expert guidance. Rather than attempting to upskill internally, they committed to Wolk's top-tier Managed Services Agreement (MSA) – DevOps tier. This provided them with:
- Ongoing monitoring, patching, and remediation, ensuring their environment remained secure and compliant.
- Virtual CIO oversight, allowing the CTO's small team to focus on development while Wolk handled complex architectural decisions.
- A "safety net" for infrastructure, giving leadership confidence that risks were being actively managed.
In addition, the client adopted SCALENOC, Wolk's SaaS platform for continuous monitoring, Well-Architected compliance, and security alerts. SCALENOC now provides 24/7 visibility and automated alerting, while Wolk's team handles remediation and reporting. This freed the client's developers to focus on building new features for patients rather than firefighting infrastructure issues.
The AWS Value
Importantly, cost optimizations uncovered in the WAFR Lite did not reduce AWS revenue — they allowed the customer to reallocate budget into higher-value AWS services such as ECS, Config, and GuardDuty. The engagement also accelerated their move into a multi-account, production-ready structure aligned with AWS best practices, creating long-term consumption growth.
The Result
From a single WAFR Lite session, Wolk and AWS jointly converted this client into a long-term managed services customer. By removing risk, stabilizing operations, and enabling scalability, the client is now positioned to expand confidently into new markets and user bases.