How AWS helps public sector organizations successfully exit their data centers

Many public sector organizations look to modernize their operations by moving to the cloud. They often face a significant challenge: what to do about their existing data center facilities and hardware assets. This moment is bigger than details about real estate and equipment—it’s an opportunity to fundamentally transform how they deliver technology services to their constituents.

Public sector organizations typically encounter several roadblocks when considering a data center exit:

• Complex compliance and regulatory requirements
• Owned facilities that are difficult to market and sell
• Long-term leases or colocation agreements with remaining obligations
• Legacy data centers or hardware with remaining book value
• A hardware refresh that is required during the planned migration period
• Select workloads that require more time to migrate
• Limited experience with large-scale migrations

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a data center purchase program through sale-leaseback, hardware purchase options with our partners, and other customer programs. Our comprehensive approach addresses the technical and financial aspects of data center exits, and we offer unique capabilities to assist our customers:

• Speed – AWS can make a purchase offer much faster than traditional real estate buyers. We also tailor our flexible sale-leaseback terms to match your migration timeline, avoiding the long-term commitments often required by investors.
• Support – Our dedicated public sector team understands government requirements. We can help navigate complex regulations for asset disposition and workloads with extended migration timelines. Our agreements provide flexibility if you need additional time to migrate.
• Savings – AWS provides comprehensive optimization strategies for your data center exit, including detailed analysis of colocation contracts, options to reduce hardware maintenance costs, and other cost-saving measures. We can also offer incentives such as migration funds, cloud adoption credits, and financial considerations related to real estate or hardware disposition.

A proven four-phase methodology

AWS has developed a structured approach to help our customers migrate to AWS and divest from their existing data centers and hardware assets. This approach follows these four phases:

1. Assess – We conduct a rapid discovery of your current environment, even when you don’t have all the details. Then we work with neutral third parties to obtain valuations of your physical assets and explore flexible options for those assets. These steps inform a comprehensive business case that analyzes total cost of ownership, right-sizes your future environments, projects potential cost savings, and aligns stakeholders on expected outcomes.
2. Mobilize – Our team helps establish your AWS Cloud foundation and prepare your workforce through training and organizational change management. We also validate the right plan for your existing assets to accelerate your IT modernization.
3. Migrate and modernize – AWS or a trusted partner uses purpose-built tools and automated processes to execute your migration efficiently. AWS Partners can also provide managed services during your migration for legacy infrastructure and applications if desired.
4. Decommission and operate – We assist with physical decommissioning and finalizing your data center exit. AWS or a partner will coach your organization on best practices for cloud operations. After the migration, the AWS Managed Services team is available to provide automated infrastructure management such as patching, monitoring, security, and compliance.

Next steps

Successfully managing a data center exit requires careful planning and experienced advisors. AWS can help you evaluate your current environment and assets, build a comprehensive business case, customize a migration strategy for your facilities, hardware, and IT workloads, maximize the value of your existing assets, and address other unique data center challenges.

To get started, contact your AWS account team or sales support today to schedule a no-cost initial consultation for planning your journey to the cloud.