Ingram Micro Germany has developed the InstantFramework for AWS (IMIF). This framework focuses on optimizing single AWS accounts according to AWS/CIS Best Practices, with a strong emphasis on security. It is specifically designed for new AWS (Registered/Select) Partners who often lack AWS expertise and do not have their own landing zones.

Ingram Micro, as an AWS Distributor, enables AWS Partners to grow revenue opportunities by reselling AWS products and solutions. AWS Partners leverage our go-to-market support, offload billing and operations, receive funding benefits, and gain technical expertise. Since Q2/2024, all new AWS resellers (SPP) must select a distributor, the extended arm of AWS.

AWS partners typically need to set up AWS accounts quickly, but blank/empty accounts are not secure enough for production workloads. Common issues include auto-assign public IPs, open default security groups, lack of persistent CloudTrail, no AWS Config, and no default encryption...
The IMIF, developed with AWS CDK v2 for Python, addresses these issues, making the AWS ecosystem more secure for our partners. The IMIF MVP was successfully launched at the AWS Partner Summit Berlin 2024.

In this session, I would like to share the journey of building this framework, from gathering partner feedback (market needs) to delivering a ready solution and a first success story. I will show how innovation leads to more secure AWS environments.
The presentation will not only be theoretical but will also dive into the "meta-level", explaining why we chose IaC and CDK over Terraform. I will discuss the technical issues faced with CDK and the development (this is level 300), challenges with AI-assisted-coding, with releasing as CF templates, and more. Besides the presentation, the IMIF will also be demonstrated in a live demo (prepared accounts due to time constraints).