4 Reasons Why You Should Migrate Your Website to AWS

With normal ways of doing business disrupted indefinitely—consumers stuck at home and shopping online, and businesses working remotely —it’s never been more important for your enterprise to have a rock-solid, reliable website.  That makes the question of where and how to host it a critical concern.

In the past, the obvious option would be to host your own servers, but in recent years, more organizations are embracing the cloud for their workloads. In 2018, a Cloud Vision 2020 study from infrastructure monitoring provider LogicMonitor predicted that 83 percent of enterprise workloads would be in the cloud by 2020, with half of those on public cloud platforms such as AWS.

Even so, the cloud is still relatively new, and many organizations are still dragging their feet. While staying on-premises might initially sound appealing, the advantages of moving your website to the cloud make it the compelling choice. 

Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of each approach and why the cloud ultimately wins.‍

Owning vs. Renting 

Hosting a site on your own servers has been compared to owning a house: you can do whatever you want with it, but you’re also responsible for all of it. Cloud hosting is more like having access to rentals all over the world: you only pay for what you actually need and use (and someone else handles the maintenance).

Like owning your house, hosting your own website will quickly grow expensive. You will face setup costs over and above the servers themselves, such as an Internet connection able to handle any expected loads (and unexpected spikes) and whatever fees your internet provider may add on for providing a static IP address. With total control comes total responsibility — so if a server goes out in the middle of the night, your staff could lose a lot of sleep.

If you’re hosting your own servers, you will also need to make sure you’ve implemented resources for disaster recovery and backup to avoid the steep consequences of downtime. Gartner calculated the cost of network downtime at $5,600 every minute, or well over $300K an hour,and chances are that’s only gone since the study was completed in 2014. Faced with that cost, your IT staff won’t be the only ones losing sleep.

The takeaway? “Homeownership,” in this case hosting your own servers, carries a fair share of risk. With that said, let’s discuss the benefits of the “rental” option: moving your website to AWS. ‍

Improved Cost Efficiency

While there are costs associated with moving your website to the cloud, the investment pays off quickly. A study by Gartner found that after the second year post-migration, on-premises costs disappear, and by the middle of the third year, cloud costs are lower than the previous on-premises costs. In the long run—and 2-1/2 years is not very long—the cloud-hosted website will be saving you money.

With the AWS cloud’s “pay-as-you-go” model, you pay only for the individual services you need, for as long as you need them, making it easier to optimize for costs.

With that said, AWS offers a myriad of services, and it can be extremely helpful to work with an AWS Managed Service Provider like Mission.

To ensure that your cloud costs are as low as possible. Leveraging Mission’s Cloud Foundation service, a team of dedicated cloud analysts focus on optimizing your AWS cloud environment, eliminating wasteful overspending and maximizing efficiency, so you can focus on growing your core business.‍

Increased Scalability and Efficiency 

With AWS you can have a datacenter or CDN hosting your website in any geography you choose, ultimately improving speed and efficiency in the locations where your website generates the most traffic. Additionally, AWS infrastructure is scalable from day one, designed to grow and shrink to meet your website’s needs as they evolve.‍

Increased Reliability

‍A website on hosted on the AWS cloud is better able to handle spikes and disasters. Your files are stored across multiple servers, so others can pick up the load if one falters. And AWS uses CloudEndure Disaster Recovery to replicate your servers, including applications and files, so it can automatically launch fully provisioned replacements if an issue strikes.‍

Rigorous Security and Compliance Standards 

When it comes to security and compliance, AWS relies on a Shared Responsibility Model that clearly delineates which aspects are their responsibility and which are yours. AWS takes care of the security of the cloud infrastructure, including its hardware, software, networking, and physical facilities, using techniques such as data encryption between servers, continuous threat monitoring and detection, and strict authentication. The customer responsibility depends on which AWS services are selected and which applications the customer deploys itself.

AWS also gets third-party validation for compliance requirements around the world, to make sure that your site meets them. The compliance reports are available at any time through a free self-service portal.‍

How Mission Can Help

While the cloud offers many advantages, navigating the choices—such as how much of the security responsibilities you should take on—can be overwhelming. That’s where we come in. As an AWS Premier Consulting Partner, Mission has extensive experience helping companies migrate to the AWS cloud. Working with you on a continuous basis, Mission can help determine the services on AWS that your organization would benefit from, and architect them in a way that best suits your website.