Modern Industrial Data Technology Lens

Publication date: October 30, 2025 (Document revisions)

This whitepaper describes the AWS Well-Architected Framework Lens on modern industrial data technology. It provides guidance to help customers apply the well-architected best practices in the design, delivery, and maintenance of AWS environments. We address general design principles as well as specific best practices and implementation guidance in six conceptual areas that we define as the pillars of the Well-Architected Framework.

The AWS Well-Architected Framework helps you understand and assess the pros and cons of decisions you make while building systems on AWS. By using the Framework, you can 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. The process for reviewing an architecture is a constructive conversation about architectural decisions and is not an audit mechanism. We believe that having well-architected systems greatly increases the likelihood of business success.

While the Framework provides foundational guidance, certain workloads, such as those in modern industrial data (MID), require specialized focus due to their unique challenges and requirements. MID workloads face distinct challenges including:

The AWS Well-Architected Framework documents a set of foundational questions that help you understand if a specific architecture aligns well with cloud best practices. The Framework provides a consistent approach to evaluating systems against the qualities you expect from modern cloud-based systems, as well as the remediation that would be required to achieve those qualities. As AWS continues to evolve and we continue to learn more from working with our customers, we will continue to refine the definition of well-architected.

AWS Solutions Architects (SAs) have extensive experience helping customers architect and optimize their MID solutions. Through thousands of customer engagements, we've aggregated best practices specifically focused on manufacturing and industrial workloads. This lens builds upon the core Well-Architected Framework to provide manufacturing-specific guidance.

This framework is intended for technology leaders in manufacturing, including Chief Technology Officers (CTOs), industrial automation engineers and architects, manufacturing IT teams, system integrators, operations technology professionals, and anyone involved in designing and operating manufacturing systems on AWS. It describes AWS best practices and strategies to use when designing and operating a cloud workload, and provides links to further implementation details and architectural patterns. For more information, see the AWS Well-Architected homepage.

AWS also provides a service for reviewing your workloads. The AWS Well-Architected Tool (AWS WA Tool) is a service in the cloud user console that provides a consistent process for you to review and measure your architecture using the AWS Well-Architected Framework. The AWS WA Tool provides recommendations for making your workloads more reliable, secure, efficient, and cost-effective.

To help you apply best practices, we have created AWS Well-Architected Labs, which provide you with a repository of code and documentation to give you hands-on experience implementing best practices. We also have teamed up with select AWS Partner Network (APN) Partners, who are members of the AWS Well-Architected Partner program. These APN Partners have deep AWS knowledge and experience and can help you review and improve your workloads.

How to use this lens

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 Support.