End-of-Support Migration Program for Windows Server

AWS helps customers with migration of their legacy Windows Server applications to the latest, supported versions of Windows Server on AWS, without any code changes. Many organizations struggle with migrating their legacy applications due to tight dependencies on older, unsupported operating systems (OS), limited in-house expertise, and/or missing access to installation media or source code. Moreover, getting extended support for these applications does not resolve the inevitable end of support problem, it just delays the inevitable. To mitigate these challenges, AWS offers the End-of-Support Migration Program (EMP) for Windows Server.

EMP for Windows Server includes technology and expert guidance to migrate your legacy applications from Windows Server 2003, 2008, and 2008 R2 to newer, supported versions on AWS, without any refactoring. The EMP technology decouples the applications from the underlying OS, enabling AWS Partners or AWS Professional Services to migrate your critical applications to a newer, supported version of Windows Server on AWS. Once on AWS, you can further optimize the operations and costs for these applications.

The EMP technology identifies the dependencies that your application has on the outdated OS, and creates a package that includes the resources necessary for the application to run on the newer version of Windows Server. The package includes all the application files, runtimes, components, and deployment tools, as well as an engine that redirects the API calls from your application to files within the package. This resolves the dependencies, and decouples the application from the underlying OS. You can now run the packaged application on future versions of Windows Server, which means you don’t have to worry about upgrading these applications when the next end of support event for Windows Server arrives.