AWS ends support for AMS Advanced on 30 June 2027. After that date the AMS Advanced console and its resources are no longer accessible. Your AWS accounts and workloads are unaffected; only the management layer is being retired. That leaves every organisation running AMS Advanced with one decision to make before the deadline, who should operate your cloud.
There are three broad routes considered here, and for SaaS companies and independent software vendors (ISVs) the choice usually narrows to two realistic destinations. This article lays out all three, then compares the two that matter.
The first is moving to AMS Accelerate, the plan AWS is keeping. It covers day-to-day operations but not the provisioning, change execution or landing zone management that Advanced did, so choosing it means taking that work back in-house. It is a reduction in scope, not a like-for-like swap.
The second is bringing operations fully in-house using AWS’s native tooling. This can work for organisations with a mature platform function, but it means hiring and retaining senior cloud expertise, establishing monitoring and after-hours response, and carrying the operational risk directly.
The third is moving to a specialist provider such as base2Services Cloud Management, which takes on the migration and operates the environment for you, with monitoring across the application layer AMS never touched, at a fixed monthly price.
| base2Services Cloud Management | AMS Accelerate | |
|---|---|---|
| Application and database layer | Monitored, backed up and performance tuned | Excluded; infrastructure only, no application config access |
| Incident response | First point of contact, executes the fix, 15-minute response on P1 and P2 | Infrastructure operations; application incidents return to your team |
| Operating model | Infrastructure operated for you, application monitored, backed up and tuned | AWS operates infrastructure; you deploy and change natively yourself |
| Pricing model | Fixed monthly price, constant for budgeting and forecasting | Percentage uplift on AWS usage, variable and rises as you scale |
| Architecture guidance | Included from the operating team, reaches applications and pipelines | Standardised infrastructure recommendations, implementation handed back to you |
| Tooling | Your architecture and IaC, operated for you | Native AWS access, managed operations on supported configurations |
| Coverage and contact | Follow-the-sun AU, EU and US, named engineer, phone support | Global coverage, delivery manager |
| Australian compliance | APRA CPS 234 and 230, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, SOC 2 | Certifications held, not local compliance advisory |
| Cost optimisation | Full AWS discount toolkit, actively managed | Full AWS discount toolkit, actively managed |
| Best fit | SaaS and ISVs wanting application-aware, local operations run for them | Teams with in-house engineering wanting AWS to run standardised infrastructure operations |
AMS Accelerate operates at the infrastructure layer by design. AWS’s own documentation states that AMS “makes changes only at the infrastructure level” and that Accelerate does not access or validate your application configurations. You remain responsible for application architecture, deployment, testing and tuning, so an incident that originates in your application or database comes back to your team. That suits organisations whose engineers own everything above the infrastructure. The question is whether that describes yours.
base2Services Cloud Management is application-aware. We help create and run application monitoring, key-page monitoring, application backups and restores, and database performance monitoring and tuning. When something breaks we are the first point of contact; we diagnose across both layers and execute the infrastructure fix, with a 15-minute response on P1 and P2 incidents. When the cause sits in your application code, your team receives the diagnosis and context rather than an unexplained alert. The code itself remains yours.
Under Accelerate, your team normally makes changes directly using native AWS tools, and your engineers carry the on-call and change load that comes with it. We work the other way around. We keep your accounts and environments running, execute change requests under a flexible model and work in your architecture with the intent behind it understood, using the tools you already use, including Terraform, CDK and CloudFormation. You get follow-the-sun coverage across Australia, Europe and the US, a named engagement engineer who owns the relationship, and compliance expertise covering the regimes software teams answer to, including APRA CPS 234 and CPS 230, ISO 27001, PCI DSS and SOC 2.
AMS assigns a Cloud Architect who makes recommendations in business reviews, drawing on the Well-Architected Tool, Trusted Advisor and Compute Optimizer. The guidance is standardised against AWS’s reference model and stops at the recommendation; implementing it is your team’s job or a separate engagement. Our guidance comes from the team operating your accounts every day, framed around your workloads, and it reaches application architecture and your build and deployment pipelines where you need it. When you want a recommendation built rather than just raised, the same team does that too.
AWS does not publish fixed AMS rates. Pricing is a percentage uplift on your AWS usage plus account-level fees, so the fee moves with your usage and rises as you scale. Independent analyses estimate the uplift at roughly 5 to 10 percent of spend with a minimum around $10,000 a month, which tends to make AMS most economical above $100,000 a month in AWS usage. Treat those as estimates and confirm with AWS directly.
base2Services Cloud Management is a fixed monthly price agreed up front. It does not track your AWS bill, so growth does not quietly lift your management fee, and budgeting for the year is straightforward.
The same underlying AWS discount mechanisms are available under either model, Savings Plans up to 72 percent, Reserved Instances up to 75 percent, Spot up to 90 percent for fault-tolerant workloads and gp3 storage migration around 20 percent, and we manage those levers continuously. The real divergence is off the invoice. Every hour your engineers spend operating infrastructure or carrying after-hours support is an hour not spent on product, and every senior platform hire you must make and retain is a risk you carry. We absorb the operational load, run the monitoring around your application and give you a team with no single point of failure to recruit around.
Choose AMS Accelerate if you have the internal engineering to own your application and your own changes, and you want AWS delivering standardised infrastructure operations around you.
Choose base2Services Cloud Management if you are a SaaS company or ISV whose incidents and value live in the application and database, and you want a named local team watching that layer and operating the infrastructure under it.
Either managed model beats leaving operations to chance while your environment scales. The deciding question is not how much each saves, because both save the same way. It is how much of your stack each one actually manages.
Is AWS Managed Services being discontinued?
Partly. AMS Advanced ends support on 30 June 2027, after which its console and resources are no longer accessible. AMS Accelerate continues, with a narrower scope that excludes provisioning, change execution and the application layer.
Does AWS Managed Services manage my application?
No. AMS operates the infrastructure layer only and does not change or validate application, middleware or database configurations. base2Services Cloud Management includes application monitoring, backups, restores and database tuning.
Can I use base2Services if my AWS bill is under $100,000 a month?
Yes. AMS tends to be economical above roughly $100,000 a month because of its minimum fees. Our fixed pricing has lower entry points, and we can further reduce AWS costs through our North Cloud FinOps agreement.
Whether you are migrating off AMS Advanced before 30 June 2027 or simply deciding who should operate your cloud, we can map your options against your accounts and your timeline, the application layer included, with no obligation. Book a 30-minute chat to get started.