Building a business case for AWS migration using a Migration Evaluator

According to IDC, 46% of CEOs in Europe alone will accelerate the process to shift to the cloud as their most strategic IT initiative in 2022.  Another research by Gartner states that by 2025, 51% of IT spending will have shifted from traditional solutions to the public cloud, compared to 41% in 2022.

Opting for AWS has become a natural choice for enterprises evaluating a migration to the cloud, owing to advantages like ease of use, cost-effectiveness, adaptiveness, security, high performance, and scalability the platform offers.

Assessing workloads and apps for the shift to the cloud is the starting point for a successful AWS migration. And because there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ strategy, one must also have a strong business case for the migration, containing a detailed technical approach, the advantages/disadvantages to these approaches, and naturally, the costs involved. This will ultimately be used to measure the value the cloud migration will create for the department/ organizations. Furthermore, there are other critical factors that need to be considered like regulations, compliance, security protocols, and process hardening throughout the migration process.

Using AWS Migration Evaluator to build a business case for cloud migration 

The business case is the path that moves organizations forward by showing how migrating to AWS will deliver compelling business value. The goal is to gain confidence in the direction of the program and help stakeholders see how it will benefit their department or business unit. One key aspect of developing a solid business case is to make sure it’s believable, not too complex, and has a gripping angle to win support from decision-makers at all levels of the organization.

The business case for migration to the cloud may originate from a long list of value drivers and is rarely driven by a single one. Several factors contribute to the business case for moving to the cloud, including agility, scalability, and cost reduction.

As an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, YASH Technologies aids businesses by leveraging tools to analyze and assess not only the ROI they gain from moving to AWS but also their cloud readiness. One of the significant tools YASH effectively leverages is the AWS Migration Evaluator (formerly called TSO Logic), which gives businesses detailed access to valuable insights and accelerates their decision-making for a shift to AWS.

With the Migration Evaluator, enterprises get a clear picture of how they use their IT assets and can estimate the AWS costs as per evaluated on-premise provisioning and usage of different workloads.

As part of YASH’s AWS migration process that drives the overall strategy, we use the Migration Evaluator to break down the migration objective into smaller chunks and identify missing requirements, risks and challenges. This will start with an on-premises inventory discovery to deliver a comprehensive overview of the business’s existing infrastructure and also help uncover any configuration issues, usage strategies, and other factors that may impact the costs of resizing their cloud footprint.

Inventory Discovery

Migration Evaluator helps organizations at each step of cloud migration planning. And if they lack data on inventory and resource usage or need better accuracy in estimating it, the tool will recommend deploying a free agentless collector that anchorages secure (read-only) access to Windows, Hyper-V, VMware, Active Directory, Linux, and SQL Server infrastructure.

When the organization already has data in its inventory, Migration Evaluator helps securely upload exports through third-party detection and monitoring systems.

If businesses gather inventory and usage details via AWS Application Discovery Services, they can use them in the Migrator Evaluator assessment. They can also harness the same Application Discover Services collector for Application Dependency Mapping within AWS Migration Hub and Migration Evaluator.

Quick Insights

As enterprises start assessments before migration, the Quick Insights pre-migration assessment provides both business and technical stakeholders visibility into the projected cost of running their on-premises workloads in the AWS Cloud. As per usage patterns, stakeholders can access a crisp summary of calculated savings for a re-host at AWS. The costs are segregated as per software and infrastructure licenses.

While working with businesses to comprehend Quick Insights, YASH enables them to understand the comprehensive data related to each server and each SQL server. And we use the Migration Evaluator for automatic updates in all reports to highlight the most current data.

Migration Expertise

If an organization goes beyond Quick Insights as assessed by Migration Evaluator, YASH can support with a Migration Evaluator Business Case. Based on their migration objectives, such as data center exit, consolidation, adopting an OpEx model, or modifying software licensing policies, our solution architects help use data to define the most favorable migration patterns.

We record the results in a business case that aligns the expectations of business and tech stakeholders and prepares the organization for the next stage of its migration process.

Migration Evaluator assessment includes

1. A rapid cost projection based on their measured on-premises provisioning and utilization
2. Visibility of the estimated savings by moving to AWS with a data-driven estimate
3. An optimized licensing analysis for Microsoft SQL workloads
4. A directional business case that identifies migration strategies for workloads to AWS (upon request)

Migration Evaluator Business Case

The report that businesses get after the assessment by Migration Evaluator includes details on:

1. How was the evaluation conducted across parameters such as existing inventory from third-party export, collection window, assumptions, and server count
2. A structured brief on the savings realized through a blend of scenarios concerning various workloads
3. An analysis of the on-premise costs
4. An account of ‘what-if’ scenarios for repurchasing licenses and bringing one’s licenses (BYOL) instances as per different workloads
5. Suggestions on subsequent steps for an effective migration

A typical migration evaluator snapshot:

Why connect with YASH Technologies for a smooth AWS migration?

The Migration Evaluator is an invaluable tool for identifying the stock of a business’ on-premise environment. This inventory helps them determine what needs to be migrated and then assesses the success of the migration. It also works as a framework for an organization’s planning and execution.

As a leading AWS Consulting Partner, YASH Technologies has always strived to be the strategic Growth and Transformation partner to numerous organizations across verticals in their transition to the cloud. YASH Cloud Migration Framework and Migration Factory Model with robust migration structure enable customers to align business and IT stakeholders around a target set of process metrics for transformation to a highly automated and industrialized cloud operating model and it provides a snapshot of their current on-premises footprint and projected cloud spend.

From guidance on defining business drivers and assessing existing licensing scenarios to help understand the AWS shared responsibility model and defining post-migration performance migrations, we ensure that enterprises maximize the value of their cloud migration.

Whether migrating to the AWS platform for more efficient digital transformation, better business continuity, agility, resilient IT security, data center consolidation, reduced operational costs, enhanced productivity, or accelerated time-to-market, enterprises can count on YASH Technologies for support.

To know more about building business cases for AWS migration, write to us at aws_info@yash.com

• AWS
• AWS Migration Evaluator