On April 6, 2020, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the general availability of its Migration Accelerator Program, also known as MAP for Windows. An addition to the existing AWS MAP, the program is aimed at assisting businesses to realize their migration objectives even faster with AWS services, best practices, tools and incentives. With the new AWS MAP, you can maximize the value of your clients’ investment in AWS with a comprehensive and easier migration and modernization of Windows or Microsoft products/services.
The AWS MAP program provides consulting support, training and services credits to reduce the risk of migrating to the cloud, build a strong operational foundation and help offset the initial cost of migrations. It includes a migration methodology for executing legacy migrations in a systematic way as well as a robust set of tools to automate and accelerate common migration scenarios.
Additionally, MAP can help you modernize your current and legacy versions of Windows Server and SQL server workloads to lower-cost cloud solutions such as SQL Server running on Linux, Amazon Aurora, Container-based services and AWS Lambda. Cloud-native or open-source solutions can help you break free from the high costs of commercial licensing.
Challenges addressed by AWS MAP for Windows
Here are a few challenges that AWS MAP for Windows can address:
Complex enterprise migrations
Deconstruction of the on-prem technical environment
Performance and relationship of migrating applications
Understanding of the current licensing footprint and options on the cloud as well as the ongoing operational process
Policy issues and business rules
Security policies
Embedded tribal knowledge
People and culture
Regulations
MAP – in detail
The AWS MAP program has been designed to help businesses with their AWS migration journey. The program tackles the migration obstacles by guiding the participant through a step-by-step process by first running through a few “cloud adoption readiness” questions. This questionnaire helps identify gaps and provide a high-level overview of the customer’s landscape. Here is a snapshot:
Create a case for change
Migration Readiness Assessment Tool (MRA)
Cloud Adoption Readiness
Rapid Discovery tools
Business Case and TCO reports
Workshops
Immersion Day (Learning and Training)
Mobilize
Create a discovery and planning phase
Create a landing zone
Identify skills/center of excellence
Provide guidance and recommendations
Establish a business case
Create a migration plan
Create an operational model
Set guardrails and establish security and compliance
Migrate and Modernize -accelerate migration at scale
Migrate – by first migration non-production workloads
Operate
Optimize
The three-step approach of MAP
AWS provides a three-step methodology to help reduce the uncertainty, difficulty and cost of migrating to the cloud.
1.Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA) Phase
In the MRA phase, you can gauge your current migration readiness state as well as identify priorities and gaps. Based on the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF), the MRA evaluates cloud readiness on eight dimensions - landing zone, operating model, security and compliance, migration process experience, skills and center of excellence, migration plan, and business plan. It is executed through a one-day workshop conducted by AWS and a MAP Partner. Preparation done in this phase help define the scope for the Migration Readiness & Planning (MRP) phase.
2.Migration Readiness & Planning (MRP) Phase
In the MRP phase, an AWS Professional Services and MAP Partner will collaborate with you to build the foundation for a large-scale migration and gain experience in migrating and operating several workloads on AWS. The partners have developed a prescriptive methodology and approach based on best practices gleaned from hundreds of customer migration projects that significantly reduce time to migrate while lowering cost and risk. You need to follow an agile approach with workstreams to prepare a cloud operational foundation for the cloud center of excellence, landing zone, operation model, and security and compliance. You can then proceed to develop a robust migration plan and compelling business case that articulates the total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on investment (ROI) for cloud migration with the help of AWS and Partner. This phase is usually completed in 2-4 months, and in the end, you will be ready to migrate at scale.
3.Migration Phase
In the Migration phase, you will execute the migration plan developed during the MRP phase with the help of AWS Professional Services and a MAP Partner. A unique aspect of this phase is establishing a “migration factory” composed of teams, tools and processes to streamline the movement of workloads from on-prem to AWS. The migration factory takes a collaborative approach by teaming work through a prioritized backlog of workloads based on migration patterns identified in the portfolio discovery and planning process. Wherever possible, partners will apply all the known migration and operational patterns to accelerate the movement of workloads, reduce risk and improve the outcome. The MRP phase typically takes 12-24 months to execute and helps you quickly achieve the business benefits of lower operating costs, agility and scalability. Once you have migrated to the cloud, you can focus on the optimization of applications, processes, operations and expenses.
Learn More: AWS Application Modernization
Other AWS MAP programs
Besides Windows, AWS MAP also has other programs in store for you:
MAP for VMWARE: Designed to support customers that seek an accelerated journey to migrate VMWare workloads to the AWS Cloud.
MAP for Storage: It assists customers in migrating storage needs to the AWS Cloud.
MAP for Connect: Designed to help customers adapt to Amazon Connect by providing a migration framework to migrate business contact center workloads to the AWS Cloud.
MAP for Mainframe Modernization: It assists in migration and modernization of mainframe workloads to the AWS Cloud.
MAP for SAP: It is designed as a fast-tracked program to assist on-prem SAP workloads to migrate easily to the AWS Cloud.
MAP for Database and Analytics: It helps accelerate database migration from specific databases, data warehouse and NoSQL platforms to the AWS Cloud.
MAP for EPIC: It is designed to accelerate the healthcare clients to migrate EPIC Electronic Health Record (EHRI) workloads to AWS Cloud.
There are also several program components of the MAP, including:
Migration Methodology: Pre-scripted guidance
Migration Central: Access template and patterns (PSA)
Migration Too: AWS Services Product, i.e., TSL Logic- Discovery Tool, Migration Hub, CloudEndure
AWS Migration Competency
AWS Training workload-specific
A comprehensive assessment followed by right-sizing can drastically cut costs by as much as 36%. With AWS Optimization Licensing Assessment (OLA), tools can be either mapped (match-for-match) or act as a standalone component.
There are several platforms on AWS that can help you achieve that.
TSO Logic
TSO Logic, a Canadian startup acquired by AWS in 2019, is a platform designed to deliver accurate data-driven recommendations to right-size and right-cost compute. Its predictive analytics provide insights on an ongoing basis to ensure that you are always running each application in the best place, with the right software and at the lowest TCO—even as your environment, cloud options and prices change. TSO Logic helps you build a clear business case to accelerate your migration planning.
Cloud Adoption Readiness Tool (CART)
The AWS Cloud Adoption Readiness Tool (CART) helps you develop plans for cloud adoption and enterprise cloud migrations, assessing your cloud migration readiness across six perspectives - business, people, process, platform, operations, and security. Once you complete a CART survey, you can download a customized cloud migration assessment that charts your readiness and recommends the next steps. The CART report includes a heatmap and radar chart with scoring and resources to help you improve your readiness score. View a sample CART report.
AWS Migration Hub
AWS Migration Hub provides a single location to track the progress of application migrations across multiple AWS and partner solutions. Migration Hub allows you to choose the AWS and partner migration tools that best fit your needs while providing visibility into the status of migrations across your portfolio of applications. Migration Hub also provides key metrics and progress for individual applications, regardless of which tools are being used to migrate each of the claims. If you need to generate right-sized EC2 instance recommendations for running on-prem workloads in AWS, use Migration Hub.
Dry run
This is a finishing module, which takes just a few clicks. In the end, you will gain access to customized results and insightful case studies filled with examples of how AWS has helped businesses like yours reach their goals by migrating their applications to the Cloud. You can view it here.
How can Trianz help?
Choosing what approach is right for your business is not an easy decision. In order to help you choose the best solution, you may wish to consult with a AWS Advanced Consulting Partner & MSP such as Trianz.
We have helped hundreds of our Fortune 500 clients streamline their software development lifecycle. One of the greatest obstacles businesses face when implementing a migration approach is adapting principles to address unique challenges. Our experts believe that automation is the future of enterprise IT, which is why we work with you to implement your migration journey to the AWS platform.
Get in touch with Trianz and start reaping the benefits of AWS Migration!
