SaaS Lens

Publication date: April 4, 2023 (Document revisions)

This paper describes the SaaS Lens for the AWS Well-Architected Framework, which enables customers to review and improve their cloud-based architectures and better understand the business impact of their design decisions. We address general design principles as well as specific best practices and guidance in five conceptual areas that we define as the pillars of the Well-Architected Framework.

Note

This whitepaper contains additional guidance not found in the SaaS Lens of the AWS Well-Architected Tool.

Introduction

The AWS Well-Architected Framework helps you understand the pros and cons of decisions you make while building systems on AWS. By using the Framework you will learn architectural best practices for designing and operating reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective systems in the cloud. It provides a way for you to consistently measure your architectures against best practices and identify areas for improvement. We believe that having well-architected systems greatly increases the likelihood of business success.

In this “Lens” we focus on how to design, deploy, and architect your multi-tenant software as a service (SaaS) application workloads in the AWS Cloud. For brevity, we have only covered details from the Well-Architected Framework that are specific to SaaS workloads. You should still consider best practices and questions that have not been included in this document when designing your architecture. We recommend that you read the AWS Well-Architected Framework whitepaper.

This document is intended for those in technology roles, such as chief technology officers (CTOs), architects, developers, and operations team members. After reading this document, you will understand AWS best practices and strategies to use when designing architectures for SaaS applications.

Custom lens availability

Custom lenses extend the best practice guidance provided by AWS Well-Architected Tool. AWS WA Tool allows you to create your own custom lenses, or to use lenses created by others that have been shared with you.

To determine if a custom lens is available for the lens described in this whitepaper, reach out to your Technical Account Manager (TAM), Solutions Architect (SA), or AWS Support.