Often, regardless of the market, a product has one chance to make a good impression to a potential customer. If a product fails at launch, it doesn’t matter why it failed – it just matters that it failed, and the opportunity is lost. If a company launches a new product that does not work as designed in an air-gapped region (or is perceived not to work), their end users/customers may lose trust and the company may not get another bite at the apple.
Developing for a cloud environment that you don’t have access to can be scary, especially when information on the exact specifications of AWS air-gapped regions are not easily accessible (usually by design). Troubleshooting or debugging errors once a product reaches an air-gapped region is not as streamlined as it would be in a normal development environment due to constraints like requirements for network access.
It is prudent, if not essential when entering a new market to ensure your first impression is on point. As such, leveraging tools that will ensure your product operates as designed is paramount to success and cannot be understated.
Enter, SHIFT.
SHIFT is a technical feat and is a byproduct of DAE’s most senior cloud practitioners. We have taken the collective cloud knowledge of our company which includes tens of thousands of hours operating within air-gapped regions, insights and feedback from AWS, and pain-points and challenges experienced by our ISV and SaaS technology partners to develop the SHIFT platform. SHIFT is the only platform out there that fully emulates AWS air-gapped regions and positions our technology partners, Government agencies, and systems integrators for success.
We have developed logic within the platform to address virtually all intricacies and nuances of an AWS air-gapped region. Specifically, SHIFT:
- Restricts available AWS services
- Restricts internet requests
- Provides AWS credentials through federated authentication service using PKI certs
- Provides customer AWS endpoints signed by a custom certificate authority
- Provides custom, region-specific AWS API responses
- Provides accurate error responses when attempting unavailable services
- Tests for custom, region-specific attributes in AWS API calls
- Tests for accurate signing of AWS API calls by custom region
- And, most importantly, provides actionable feedback on remediation steps with JSON output (*shameless plug: ask to see our demo)
What does this mean? For all you non-Cloud gurus out there, it means that you can now utilize the SHIFT platform to test for all the technical “gotchas” within AWS air-gapped regions. It means you can launch products with a higher level of fidelity that it will work as designed. It means you can “build low” (in commercial AWS regions) and SHIFT high (to AWS air-gapped regions). It means you can recreate errors in commercial AWS environments when troubleshooting potential issues in the air-gapped region with your existing workforce.
In short, it means you can configure your product with confidence that it’ll work as designed when launching into the AWS air-gapped regions. SHIFT can significantly increase a product’s time to market, reduce development cost (by eliminating or reducing rework), and earn customer trust. AWS air-gapped regions support some of the most important public-sector customers in the world, and it is vital to provide them with products and software that can enable their missions.
*Note: Not an actual SHIFT customer. We have no idea who this person is.