Sandbox Studio vs Innovation Sandbox
See how Sandbox Studio builds upon and enhances the Innovation Sandbox foundation with advanced features, better user experience, and enterprise-grade capabilities.
Feature Comparison
See how Sandbox Studio enhances every aspect of the Innovation Sandbox foundation
| Feature | Innovation Sandbox | Sandbox Studio |
|---|---|---|
| User Experience & Interface | ||
| User Interface | Basic interface with limited user experience considerations. | Modern, intuitive, and user-friendly interface designed for ease of use. |
| Account Management | ||
| Account Level Permissions | Only allows you to specify Service Control Policies (SCPs) for the whole solution. This means an admin can set permissions but it applies to every single account. | Managers can specify exactly what permissions and AWS services a user can use in each Sandbox environment (at an account template level). |
| Manager Groups | Has only one shared manager pool. Any manager using ISB can approve a request from any user regardless of which type of account it is. | A manager can specify exactly which people in the organisation can manage accounts, approve requests for accounts and login to those accounts. |
| Launch Templates | Only creates empty AWS accounts. The user will have to take additional steps to install things in the account which are usually difficult, time consuming and prone to human error. | When launching an AWS account, we can pre-configure resources in the account so that when the user logs into the account there is something in there ready to use. |
| Account History | You can only see your current active accounts. | Users can go back and see previous accounts that they have created. |
| Unlock Accounts | Once you lock (freeze) an account, you cannot unlock it. | Managers can lock and unlock an account as many times as they want. |
| Account Themes | All account templates look the same and are boring. | Managers can add a color theme and icon to an account template, creating a more marketplace like feeling. |
| Account Tagging | There is no concept of tagging. Meaning you can only get a view of how much the total spend was across all accounts. | Managers can add their own set of tags so that they can group accounts by whatever context that makes sense to their organisation. (Used in cost reporting). |
| Account Cleaning | Only allows admins to run the 'clean up' job on an account if the clean up failed. | Admins can force a clean-up of an account regardless of what state it is in. |
| Cost Management & Reporting | ||
| Cost Reporting | Has very limited reporting capabilities. To generate similar reports, customers would need to build their own complex solution to export data, massage the data, generate graphs, etc. | Managers can generate a report to show how much each lease has consumed. They have the option to group by tags, account templates and specify which period to look at. |
| System Administration | ||
| Installation Script | Requires many manual steps to install, is very error prone and complicated to get right the first time. | We have developed a way to step the customer through the installation of Sandbox Studio and automate as many of the steps as possible through an interactive script. |
| Email Preferences | There is no ability to configure which emails are sent and which are not. A lot of emails get sent that people ignore. | Admins can easily configure which emails are sent in the UI. |
| Embedded Settings | Requires admins to login separately into AWS and configure things in AWS AppConfig (complicated UI). | All admin level settings can be updated within the UI. |
| Update Checker | Does not have any capability to notify users when a new version is available. | The system automatically checks if a new version of the solution is available and notifies the user in the UI. |
| Manual Monitoring | Admins must wait for the monitoring jobs to run. If accounts fall out of sync, they cannot do anything but wait. | A set of monitoring jobs run every 1-6 hours to check if accounts are healthy. We have given admins the ability to manually start these jobs from within the UI. |
| User Experience | ||
| Withdraw Requests | If a user requests an account, it remains visible in their dashboard forever (until a manager approves/denies it). | Users can withdraw a request for an account if it is pending approval and they change their mind. |
The Bottom Line
Innovation Sandbox
Great foundation for basic AWS sandbox management
- • Open source and free
- • Basic functionality
- • Requires technical expertise
- • Limited scalability
Sandbox Studio
Enterprise-ready solution with advanced features
- • Professional support included
- • Advanced automation
- • User-friendly interface
- • Enterprise scalability
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