Deploy and Manage Infrastructure as Code — Consistently and at Scale
Infrastructure automation eliminates manual provisioning, reduces configuration drift, and enables consistent environment deployment through code — making cloud infrastructure as reliable and repeatable as a software release process.
What RLM Delivers on Cloud Infrastructure Automation
Manual cloud infrastructure management doesn't scale — and the inconsistencies it introduces create security vulnerabilities, operational failures, and compliance gaps. Infrastructure as Code transforms cloud operations from an art into an engineering discipline.
How We Approach Cloud Infrastructure Automation
A structured path through the Cloud Infrastructure Automation decision — current-state discovery, shortlist and benchmark, commercial negotiation, then support until it is actually working.
Infrastructure Automation Maturity Assessment
We assess your current IaC adoption — Terraform coverage, CI/CD integration, drift detection, and state management — and identify the gaps between current practice and a mature infrastructure automation capability.
Tooling Selection & Architecture
We evaluate infrastructure automation platforms — Terraform, Pulumi, AWS CDK, Azure Bicep, and Ansible — against your cloud mix, team expertise, and policy compliance requirements.
Policy-as-Code Implementation
Infrastructure automation requires guardrails — automated compliance checking that prevents non-compliant resources from being deployed. We design the policy-as-code framework using tools like OPA, Sentinel, or AWS Config.
CI/CD Pipeline Integration
Infrastructure automation delivers full value when integrated into CI/CD pipelines — automated plan, review, and apply workflows that treat infrastructure changes with the same rigor as application code changes.
Cloud Infrastructure Automation Evaluation Criteria
Before committing to any Cloud Infrastructure Automation platform, these are the points worth forcing a straight answer on.
State Management
Terraform state files contain sensitive data and must be managed securely. Evaluate state backend options (S3+DynamoDB, Terraform Cloud, Azure Storage) and the access controls around state management.
Drift Detection
Manual changes to cloud infrastructure create drift from IaC definitions — creating security and compliance exposure. Evaluate drift detection capability and the process for remediating or codifying detected drift.
Module Design & Reusability
Reusable, well-tested IaC modules accelerate development and enforce standards. Evaluate the module design methodology and the team's discipline in building reusable vs. one-off infrastructure code.
Secret Management Integration
IaC pipelines must not store secrets in code. Evaluate integration with HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, and the injection methodology for secrets at deployment time.
Cost Estimation Integration
Evaluate Infracost or native cost estimation integrations in your IaC pipeline that surface the cost implications of infrastructure changes before they're applied — preventing surprise cost increases from configuration changes.
Disaster Recovery for IaC State
IaC state is critical infrastructure data. Evaluate backup procedures, versioning, and recovery capability for state files — loss of Terraform state can make existing infrastructure unmanageable.
"RLM helped us rationalize our multi-cloud spend and identify over $1.2M in annual savings. Their approach was methodical and unbiased — exactly what we needed."
The benchmark comes first. Without a baseline, “savings” is just a number a vendor gave you.
Where This Matters Most
Sector-specific considerations we see repeatedly in cloud and managed services engagements.
A Sample of the Cloud & Managed Services Providers We Evaluate
RLM is vendor neutral. These are among 600+ providers in our evaluation set — inclusion here is not an endorsement, and we are paid by the provider you choose, not by any provider in particular. How that works →
Thinking About Cloud Infrastructure Automation?
Start with a no-cost conversation with an RLM cloud advisor — vendor neutral, no agenda, just clarity on the right path forward.
Talk to a Cloud Advisor