This article is based on an interview with HeleCloud CEO and co-founder Dob Todorov, originally published by New Statesman Tech.
What Is HeleCloud?
HeleCloud is an Amazon Web Services (AWS)-only systems integrator and managed services provider (MSP). The company operates offices in London and the Netherlands, with an engineering centre in Sofia, Bulgaria. Its business divides into two main practices: professional services and managed services.
According to CEO and co-founder Dob Todorov, the managed services arm runs as a “24/7 highly automated operation” designed to provide support for mission-critical applications on the AWS platform.
Who Does HeleCloud Work With?
HeleCloud’s customer base spans several sectors. Examples cited by Todorov include:
- CGI — the large systems integrator running the UK government’s smart metres programme, for whom HeleCloud builds and operates cloud-based infrastructure on AWS.
- Rakuten Viber — the voice-over-IP service, for whom HeleCloud reviews and optimises security and compliance on the AWS platform.
- Zopa — the financial services company, for whom HeleCloud is migrating significant portions of mission-critical systems from traditional hosting facilities to AWS.
The Core Misconception: AWS Does Not Manage Everything for You
The central message from Todorov is that many organisations adopted AWS under a fundamental misunderstanding of the shared responsibility model.
“Many organisations made the assumption that in AWS, it’s all managed for you from AWS and therefore you don’t need managed services at all — and that’s only partially true. It’s true that a lot of the conventional managed services provider work around hardware and connectivity is no longer required, but at the same time cloud requires someone to architect it to a fashion which is secure, compliant, high-performing and both cost and operationally efficient.”
— Dob Todorov, CEO, HeleCloud
In other words, AWS abstracts away physical infrastructure — servers, networking hardware, data-centre facilities — but it does not automatically design, secure, optimise or govern the workloads customers run on top of it. That responsibility still sits with the customer, or with an MSP acting on their behalf.
Where MSPs Add Value in the Cloud Era
Todorov argues that the role of the MSP has shifted rather than disappeared. Traditional MSPs focused on hardware racking, patching physical servers and managing network connectivity. On AWS, that lower layer is handled by Amazon. However, the layers above it — architecture, security posture, compliance, cost governance and operational automation — still require expert attention.
HeleCloud’s differentiation rests on two pillars:
- AWS specialism — deep, single-platform expertise covering ITIL v4 integration, infrastructure support, security and compliance management, performance management, service and data availability, and cost optimisation.
- DevOps as a managed service — the ability to deliver continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines as part of an ongoing managed engagement, rather than treating DevOps as a one-off professional services project.
“Managed services providers can add value by moving up the stack and making sure they automate and they involve DevOps principles on top of conventional IT service management.”
— Dob Todorov, CEO, HeleCloud
Todorov also points to the pace of AWS feature releases as a practical reason organisations need ongoing help. AWS regularly launches new services and updates existing ones; keeping an estate current and secure in that environment requires continuous engineering attention.
The Changing Cloud Market: New Build vs. Legacy Migration
Todorov describes a clear split in how organisations are approaching cloud adoption:
- Net-new workloads are almost universally being built in the public cloud.
- Existing legacy applications are largely staying in on-premises data centres or private cloud environments, at least for the time being.
“Cloud is becoming the mainstream platform for virtually all organisations; everything new is being built in the public cloud space, but a trend we’re not seeing is mass migration of existing applications — so even though there are some projects, for the time being large organisations are keeping their existing estate in data centres or in the private cloud.”
— Dob Todorov, CEO, HeleCloud
Todorov believes migrating existing applications to public cloud would deliver better security and compliance outcomes, but acknowledges that large organisations have not yet reached that conclusion at scale. Risk aversion, regulatory complexity and the sheer effort of re-platforming are common barriers.
Multi-Cloud Strategy
As multi-cloud becomes a common enterprise strategy, HeleCloud — being AWS-only — addresses non-AWS requirements by partnering with large systems integrators that have capabilities on other platforms. This allows the company to participate in broader deals without diluting its AWS depth.
What’s Next: SaaS, PaaS, AI and Data
Looking ahead, Todorov identified two trends he expected to define the following years (from the perspective of early 2020):
- Cloud providers moving further up the stack — expanding their SaaS and PaaS offerings beyond raw infrastructure, giving customers higher-level managed capabilities.
- Data and AI/ML convergence — organisations archiving large volumes of data on platforms such as AWS, and then applying artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to derive insight from that data.
Key Takeaway for DevOps and Cloud Engineers
The shared responsibility model is not just a compliance checkbox — it is an operational reality. AWS secures and maintains the underlying infrastructure, but every customer is responsible for what they build on top of it: architecture decisions, IAM policies, encryption configuration, patching schedules for managed services, cost guardrails and CI/CD pipelines. Whether that work is done in-house or by an MSP, it must be done. Organisations that skip it do not escape the responsibility; they simply accumulate unmanaged risk.