AWS Migration Acceleration Program

Jumping to the Cloud Seamlessly

The Amazon Cloud is an admittedly esoteric platform to adapt to.  With how new the technology still is, newer organizations who already have existing projects and are unfamiliar with the cloud can register to receive aid to move everything over and adapt it to the cloud.  Having the program to aid migration can help meet migration goals and make the process more cost efficient.  Through the program, clients will be able to reach out to various companies who employ experts on AWS such as ourselves.

Companies should care about the AWS Migration Acceleration Program because it offers tools, resources, and guidance to help organizations migrate existing applications and workloads to the Amazon Cloud more efficiently. This program can help meet migration goals, make the process more cost-efficient, and provide benefits such as cost savings, reallocated staff for more efficiency, operational resilience, and better business agility. By participating in the AWS MAP program, companies can smoothly transition to AWS, optimize their solutions in the cloud, and receive ongoing support to save on operational funding. 

By making the transition to AWS, users can expect a variety of benefits to how they conduct their business such as:

• Cost Savings – The cloud does offer opportunities to cut on operational spending by using resources much closer to the number of resources actually needed with additional options for resource types.  IT costs and tasks are further reduced by automating key maintenance actions.  By comparison to legacy systems, infrastructure on the cloud is almost a third cheaper.

• Reallocated Staff – AWS can handle many of the rudimentary administrative tasks that otherwise take up a bulk of business operations.  Customers can expect greater efficiency in how their staff carries out tasks with fewer members working on basic maintenance.

• Operational Resilience - Overall, AWS provides a faster experience.  With how much data the AWS Cloud handles, Amazon has invested heavily in cybersecurity.  Furthermore, the platform performs well at scale and can react to high traffic as well as it can low traffic intervals through predictive modeling.  As well as saving on spending, users can expect less downtime as a result.

• Better Business Agility - Models can be rolled out faster with less time spent deploying an application or service.  Better yet, businesses can more easily operate globally with AWS having cloud hardware allocated in different regions and continents to provide services and applications with the lowest latency possible.

Our Contributions

As AWS partners, it is our job to help assess and evaluate potential customers who want to migrate.  While AWS can accommodate different types of organizations with various needs, an AWS environment must be manually tailored and organized to best suit the organization and what it might need the most from the cloud.  After making more arrangements based on your organizational needs, our experts will typically conduct the following:

• Migration Readiness Assessment – In regards to the organization’s current IT structure, this needs to be examined carefully.  After our experts fully evaluate and understand the organization’s IT functionality, we’ll put out a roadmap with complete steps on how migration will work.

• Workshopping and Planning - This phase will require extensive coordination between our experts and the client’s own.  After we draft a migration plan, we will educate the organization’s teams about our process.  This can either take place in-person or in a virtual workshop.

• Migration Wave Execution - We will be helping every step of the way during the actual migration process, taking into consideration common practices and the needs of the organization’s goals.  Everything in AWS’ toolkit will be needed to ensure everything is ported over successfully.  It’s important to fully optimize the solution in the cloud to maintain efficiency and security during this stage of development.

• Training and Knowledge – To ensure the organization’s own staff can handle the changes and manage an AWS environment, our team will provide training resources and guidance to help our clients learn.

• Post-Migration Support - Even after we have successfully migrated a client to the Amazon Cloud, we will continue to provide support, including optimization assistance and recommendations on how to save on operational funding.

Planning Changes

Not building an application or solution natively to AWS is not a precluding factor to making the most of cloud services.  Through careful execution with best practices and experience implemented, it is possible to place an existing project on AWS and receive the necessary training to further understand the inner workings of the platform.

To achieve the maximum financial benefit from the AWS MAP program, it is crucial to focus on proper tagging of workloads before migration. While participation in the program offers three financial advantages, the guaranteed financial credits hinge on the correct tagging of workloads. AWS does not retroactively provide credits for untagged workloads post-migration. To capitalize on the financial gains available, a collaborative effort between executive/financial professionals who set credit expectations and technical professionals responsible for tagging is essential. Ensuring both parties understand the business benefits is key to avoiding missed credit opportunities. By working together closely and proactively tagging workloads before migration, businesses can avoid this common pitfall and optimize their financial gains from the AWS MAP program.