Most AWS consulting firms in Australia sell infrastructure: landing zones, migrations, managed services. We do the engineering, but we start from the product. Honest Fox is a Melbourne software development company with AWS-certified engineers, so research, design, architecture and build come from one accountable team. That team won Gold at the 2024 Australian Good Design Awards for Ngarrngga with the University of Melbourne, and builds for Australia Post, Asahi, Altius and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. Here is what we do on AWS.
Cloud native app development on AWS
Products designed for AWS from the first sprint, not moved there later. We shape the product with your users, then architect it on managed AWS services so it scales with demand and you pay for what you use. You get a platform that is designed, built and reviewed against the AWS Well-Architected Framework, with the documentation to prove it. Serverless and container-based stacks, event-driven integration, infrastructure as code, and a delivery team that covers research, design, engineering and QA, so there is no hand-off between the people who decide what to build and the people who build it.
Application modernisation and AWS migration services
Ageing systems moved without disrupting the people who rely on them. We map what the current platform actually does, decide what to rehost, refactor or retire, and migrate in phases so each release is safe to run. Legacy system modernisation is a product decision as much as a technical one: we redesign the parts people struggle with and leave alone the parts that work. You keep operating throughout, and you end up with a platform on AWS that your own team can run, with a written assessment before any migration starts.
AI voice agents on AWS
Agents grounded in your data, running in your AWS account, with ElevenLabs for the voice. We build retrieval-grounded assistants and AI voice agents on Amazon Bedrock so answers come from your content, not the open internet. Every agent ships with evaluation, guardrails and a human hand-off, because an agent that cannot be governed cannot go live. As an ElevenLabs partner we handle the voice layer too: natural speech, interruption handling, and phone or in-app channels, with transcripts and analytics your team can review.
How we deliver on AWS
AI has made building faster than ever. That moves the risk to deciding what to build. We follow AWS’s AI-Driven Development Lifecycle (AI-DLC): specify the product first, then let AI-assisted engineering build to that spec under human review.
01
Inception
Research, product strategy and a written spec everyone signs off: users, journeys, architecture, data and compliance obligations. Nothing is built until it is clear what done means.
02
Construction
Short build cycles against the spec, with AI-assisted engineering reviewed by AWS-certified people. Infrastructure as code, automated tests, and Well-Architected reviews at milestones.
03
Operations
Observability, cost controls and a handover your team can run. We stay on to optimise if you want us to.
Delivery control, risk and compliance, quality standards and value tracking sit across all three phases. Read why we think AI is making waterfall right again.
Built for Australian requirements
Data residency and compliance come up in every conversation with a CTO or Head of Digital. Here is how we handle them, in the spec, before anything is built.
Two Australian regions
AWS runs two regions in Australia: Asia Pacific (Sydney), ap-southeast-2, and Asia Pacific (Melbourne), ap-southeast-4. We default to an Australian region and weigh Melbourne’s proximity against Sydney’s broader service catalogue for each workload.
Data stays onshore
Data residency is an architecture decision, not a promise. We pin storage, backups, logs and AI inference to Australian regions wherever the service allows, and document any exception before you approve it.
Compliance in the spec
APRA CPS 230, IRAP, the Essential Eight and the Privacy Act are treated as requirements in Inception, not a checklist at the end. AWS publishes its IRAP assessment and shared-responsibility model; we design your side of that line and show the evidence.
Migration funding
The AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) can offset part of a qualifying migration. We help you assess whether your workload is eligible and prepare the case with AWS. We do not promise credits we do not control.
Questions buyers ask us
How do I find an AWS partner that also does product design?
Search the AWS Partner Solutions Finder for Australian partners, then check two things: whether their delivered work has been validated by AWS, and whether the same team does research and design or hands you to a separate firm. Most AWS implementation partners are infrastructure specialists. Honest Fox is a product company first, with AWS-certified engineers on the same team.
What is an AWS Select Tier partner?
Select Tier is a tier in the AWS Partner Network’s Services Path. To hold it, a partner must keep AWS-certified engineers on staff and have delivered customer work that AWS has reviewed. For you it means our people’s skills and our delivered projects have been checked by AWS, not just described by us. See the AWS tiers page for the criteria. Our listing is on AWS Partner Finder.
What is an AWS migration assessment or cloud readiness assessment?
A short, fixed-scope engagement before any migration. We inventory your applications and data, map dependencies, and decide what to rehost, refactor, replace or retire. You get a target architecture on AWS, a phased plan, an indicative cost range and a list of compliance obligations. It is also the evidence AWS uses when assessing Migration Acceleration Program eligibility.
Can our data stay in Australia?
Yes. We architect for Australian regions, ap-southeast-2 (Sydney) or ap-southeast-4 (Melbourne), and pin storage, backups, logs and AI inference onshore wherever the AWS service supports it. Any service that cannot be kept in an Australian region is flagged in the spec before you approve it.
Are we eligible for AWS migration funding?
Possibly. The Migration Acceleration Program depends on the size and type of workload and on AWS’s own assessment. We review your environment, tell you honestly whether it looks like a fit, and prepare the case with AWS. We do not promise credits before AWS has confirmed them.
How do you keep the cost of a build predictable?
By specifying before building. Inception produces a written spec, an architecture and a phased plan you can price against, and each Construction cycle delivers working software against that spec. Changes are visible and costed as they happen, so there is less rework and fewer surprises at the end of the engagement.
Talk to us about AWS
Tell us what you are trying to build, move or automate. We will come back with a straight view on whether we are the right AWS consulting partner for it and what the first step looks like. We are in Cremorne, Melbourne, and work with organisations across Australia.
