01 // What we review
Your AWS bill keeps growing and nobody can say exactly why
Costs grow faster than usage, and every change raises the question of what else depends on it. An architecture review makes both visible.
- 2weeks to the report
- 5Well-Architected pillars
- 90day roadmap
- 12'000CHF fixed price
How you know a review is due
The AWS bill grows, but usage does not grow at the same pace. Nobody can say offhand which line item covers what. When one component changes, it is unclear what else depends on it, so nothing gets touched. The knowledge about the setup sits with one person, and that person sometimes goes on holiday.
This is rarely the result of bad work. It happens when an architecture grows over years and every single decision was right at the moment it was made. Requirements move faster than structure does.
What we review
We work through your setup against the five pillars of the AWS Well-Architected Framework:
- Cost: which resources idle, where sizing no longer matches actual load, which line items can come down without losing function.
- Security: permissions, network boundaries, encryption, where your data physically sits and who can see it.
- Reliability: what happens when a component fails, how long recovery takes, whether backups are actually restored.
- Operational excellence: deployment process, monitoring, alerting, how much manual work the operation carries.
- Performance: response times under load, scaling behaviour, where bottlenecks form.
What you get
After two weeks you have a written report. It lists the findings, prioritized by impact and effort, each with the concrete measure and an estimate of what it buys you. Alongside it, a 90-day roadmap that separates immediate fixes from medium-term rebuilds.
The report is written so both sides can read it: management finds the cost impact and the risk, your technical team finds the reasoning and the path to get there.
Why work with us
- You work directly with the senior architect who does the review. No account manager passing you to a junior.
- 30 years of software engineering and SCMC.ch as proof: the same serverless architecture, in production in AWS Zurich since November 2025.
- We are based in Bern, your data sits in AWS Zurich. Fluent German and English, with an understanding of the Swiss business context.
- The audit is separate from implementation. We have no interest in inventing findings that we then get to fix ourselves.
What it costs
CHF 12’000 fixed for two weeks, regardless of how much we find. The price is set up front so you never have to negotiate scope mid-audit the way a day-rate model forces you to.
A cost audit is part of the engagement. If we find running spend that can come down without losing function, the audit often carries itself within the first month.
Common questions
Who does AWS audits for SMEs in Switzerland?
We do, as K-I-Soft IT&Holding GmbH based in Bern. The AWS Health Check is a standalone two-week audit at a fixed price of CHF 12'000, led by a senior architect with 30 years of experience. You work with him directly, with no layer in between.
What does an AWS Well-Architected audit cost?
With us, CHF 12'000 as a fixed price for two weeks. That covers the architecture review against the five Well-Architected pillars, the written report with prioritized findings, and a 90-day roadmap. A cost audit is part of it and often pays the investment back within the first month.
What is the difference between an AWS Health Check and the AWS Health Dashboard?
The AWS Health Dashboard is a status service from AWS that shows you incidents and planned maintenance affecting your resources. Our AWS Health Check is a consulting engagement: a person reviews your architecture, your costs and your operational practice, then writes down what to do and in what order.
Do we have to keep building with you after the audit?
No. The audit is deliberately separate from our build offerings. You get the report and the roadmap and can take it from there internally or hand it to any other partner. If you want us to implement, we quote that separately.
How much effort does this take on our side?
Expect two or three one-hour sessions plus read access to the AWS account and whatever documentation exists. We handle the rest. We do not need access to production data to assess the architecture.
Want to know where your AWS costs actually go?
In a 30-minute call we work out whether an audit would tell you anything useful. If your setup is already clean, we say so and you save the CHF 12'000.