Cost saving strategies for large enterprise cloud migrations

Introduction

In today’s digital era, migrating to the cloud is no longer a question of “Why,” but rather “When.” Beyond infrastructure cost savings, cloud migration offers a multitude of benefits, including enhanced flexibility, agility, and reliability. However, while cloud migration presents a wealth of opportunities, it also comes with the potential for unplanned expenses that can hinder progress. Migration costs can vary significantly depending on the size of the organization, the complexity of its applications, and the duration of the migration process. Moreover, limited IT budgets and the need for efficiency in the current economic climate further complicate cloud migration initiatives.
This blog explores cost-saving strategies for large-scale enterprise cloud migrations.

Before starting cloud migration

To ensure a successful cloud migration, it is crucial to identify the business drivers that will rally stakeholders across the organization. This entails crafting a data-driven business case that outlines the scope, benefits, and timeline of the migration project. Aligning the migration timeline with tangible business outcomes, such as a data center exit, provides a concrete benchmark against which progress can be evaluated. Leverage tools such as the AWS Migration Evaluator to build a compelling business case for a cost-effective migration.

Navigating the intricacies of cloud migration can be a daunting task, but with the right partner by your side, the journey becomes easier and more rewarding. AWS offers Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) to help customers offset migration costs. AWS MAP provides tools, best practices, access to the AWS Partner Network (APN), and joint investments in migration opportunities. Engaging with AWS early in the program can help you review every step of your cloud migration journey and ensure the most optimized approach.

MAP recommends a 3-step approach (see Figure 1) to migration – 1/Assess, 2/Mobilize and 3/Migrate.

Figure 1 – AWS Migration Acceleration Program 3 step approach

The Assess Phase

The goal of this phase is to assess organizational readiness to operate in the cloud.

An understanding of current on-premise IT assets is crucial for estimating migration efforts and cloud costs. Remember that one of the common problems faced by organizations when considering migration is the “double-bubble cost”. This bubble is formed when organizations are covering expenses for their current on-premises infrastructure while incurring new costs for a cloud migration.

Refer to AWS Prescriptive guidance in choosing the right discovery tool based on the infrastructure mix. Discovery should include assessing the 3rd party licensing costs, which are often overlooked when planning migrations. AWS MAP includes Optimization and Licensing Assessment (OLA), a proven framework to help understand licensing costs (see Figure 2) and provide cloud-native and cost-effective alternatives. Many AWS customers have realized significant savings by leveraging OLA. This comprehensive discovery will help in 1/choosing the right AWS hosting plans (Savings plans and Reserved Instances) that offer discounted pricing based on the spend commitments and 2/planning migration waves to accelerate migrations and reduce “double-bubble costs”.

Another option to mitigate double-bubble costs by reducing the cost of maintaining legacy equipment is the IT divestiture approach – such as the one offered by AWS partners such as ReluTech. This approach incorporates cost-savings strategies like outsourcing IT maintenance, avoiding costly IT refreshes, purchase and lease back of on-prem assets to help customers move to the cloud quickly and cost-effectively. Learn how Jonas Fitness Inc., a leading provider of gym and fitness club management software, accelerated their migration through equipment buyback.


Figure 2 – Licenses: Significant driver of migration cost savings

The next step is to assess the readiness to migrate and operate in the cloud. AWS Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA) is a complimentary workshop to assess an organization across the six AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) pillars: Business, People, Governance, Platform, Security and Operations. MRA’s output includes a plan to address identified gaps and recommending additional workshops such as the AWS Learning Needs Analysis (LNA). LNA assesses AWS skills readiness and recommends customized learning plans. AWS Immersion Days deliver hands-on cloud services training to employees participating in the migration initiatives.

With a detailed portfolio discovery, hosting plan, and output from the MRA, program is now ready to move to the Mobilize phase.

The Mobilize phase

The goal of this phase is to build a baseline cloud environment for migration and develop a migration strategy for applications with repeatable migration patterns. It includes: 1/ establishing a CCoE (Cloud Center of Excellence) – a cross functional team to standardize governance, and best practices in cloud migrations; 2/ building a well-architected foundational cloud environment (“Landing Zone”); and 3/ addressing gaps identified from the MRA conducted in the Assess phase.

Organizations should be cognizant of potential hurdles at this stage, such as choosing initial workloads and sequencing migrations, ambiguity in migration strategies, security and compliance frameworks, and the availability of subject matter experts. Addressing these concerns early on can prevent analysis paralysis and maintain migration timelines. AWS Experience Based Acceleration (EBA) aims at addressing friction points and blockers in an agile, hands-on-approach. EBA brings the customer’s Key decision makers and AWS experts in to a focused workshop setting to help address blockers with a “do it to prove it approach”. A platform EBA followed by a migration EBA is a great combination to meet the goals of the mobilization phase. Platform EBA helps create a well-architected landing zone, and a migration EBA helps test the landing zone by migrating a few applications quickly. The CCoE continues to review guardrails, establish repeatable patterns, and implement cost optimization controls.

In cases of limited employee bandwidth or expertise, the AWS MAP partner funding process can be leveraged to help offset costs associated with engaging AWS Professional Services or AWS Partners to build out a well-architected landing zone and a repeatable migration approach.

Planning migration waves is one of the most important activities in this phase. Planning migration waves ahead of time allows the project to flow swiftly as the team becomes more familiar with the migration process.

With a well-architected landing zone, a migration approach that is tested, and a migration wave plan, it’s time to accelerate migrations.

The Migrate Phase

The goal of this phase is to migrate workloads to the cloud quickly to keep double-bubble costs low and realize the benefits of cloud adoption as outlined in the business case.

The AWS Cloud Migration Factory is a migration governance and automation layer to migrate workloads to AWS at scale. Mayden leveraged the AWS Cloud Migration Factory to migrate 300 servers to AWS in 6 weeks.

Leverage AWS tools like the AWS Application Migration Service and the AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) to expedite migrations and reduce costs without disrupting business operations. These tools support a wide range of applications without requiring additional investments and come with tiered pricing options.

Plan to start small and increase migration velocity with each subsequent wave. The initial wave should be a single application or applications with fewer dependencies. Adding complex applications to the subsequent waves will give the team time to learn and adjust. Additionally, the team can identify and implement process improvements to increase the velocity of later waves.

While the migrations are in progress, it is important to establish a periodic check-in with AWS Cost Optimization experts to review cost-saving opportunities.

It is also important to initiate the next big step at this point, which is “Modernization”. Remember, both migrating and modernizing are important for continued cost optimization and to fully realize the benefits of the cloud (See Figure 3).

Figure 3 – Migrating and Modernizing are Important to fully realize cloud benefits.

Conclusion

Leading enterprise cloud migrations in the current economic climate can be challenging, but leveraging proven cost-saving strategies can maximize success.

Call to Action

• Reach out to your AWS account team to discuss cost saving strategies for your cloud migration journey.
• Refer to the links below for more detailed information on AWS cloud services referred in this blog
o Cloud Migrations Services on AWS
o AWS Migration Evaluator
o AWS Migration Acceleration Planning (MAP)
o AWS Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA)
o AWS Optimization and Licensing Assessment (OLA)
o AWS Learning Needs Analysis (LNA)
o AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF)
o AWS Experience Based Acceleration (EBA)
o AWS Application Migration Service
o AWS Prescriptive Guidance Strategy and best practices for AWS large migrations

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