Learning Something New: Amazon Managed Services (AMS)

Recently, I came across Amazon Managed Services (AMS) — and it really shifted my perspective a bit.

Instead of you managing your infrastructure day-to-day, AMS takes over the heavy lifting: managing, operating, and maintaining your AWS environment.

For example:
If I need to disable termination protection on an EC2 instance, I can’t just do it directly.
I have to raise an RFC (Request for Change) — and AMS will implement it for me.

It’s a great model for governance, but here’s where I found a bit of friction:
👉 Not every small task has an automated RFC path.
👉 Manual RFCs can become painful sometimes and cause loss of traceability.
👉 In a world where we emphasize GitOps, IaC (Infrastructure as Code), and auditability, that gap really stands out.

This got me thinking:
How do different teams balance control vs. speed when working with managed services like AMS?

I’d love to hear your perspectives:

How do you maintain agility in highly governed environments?

How are you combining GitOps/IaC principles with services like AMS?

Any lessons learned or best practices you’d share?

Always eager to learn from this awesome community. 🚀