The Benefits of Migrating to AWS with a Partner

If you’re considering migrating some or all of your operations to AWS, you probably have a handle on some of the benefits you can expect. But once the decision is made, that’s when your work really begins, as the actual migration process brings its own set of challenges. You can go it alone and decide what resources you’ll need, plan how you’ll monitor application performance, establish KPIs for what you plan to spend or hope to save, and implement a security initiative, all-in house. In fact, AWS provides tools with which to accomplish all these things. But as Ben Trowbridge, founder and CEO of Alsbridge, a sourcing advisory and benchmarking firm once said, working directly with Amazon is “like being handed a brain-surgery kit, being told it’s world class and ready to go, and now you can go do brain surgery.”

Enlisting a qualified partner to help tackle this complex task is like sharing the kit with a trained neurosurgeon. A partner with the AWS Migration Competency such as Mission can help you navigate all phases of complex migration projects from discovery, planning, execution, and optimization. Here are some of the ways we can help.

Making the plan

When you migrate to AWS, you have to think about what data and applications to move and how, while maintaining the availability and speed your users or customers have grown used to from your website or applications. A partner like Mission will lay the foundation for a successful migration by carrying out a Migration Readiness Assessment to make sure the process meets both your business and your technology needs.

You also need to document and evaluate your current resources — configuration, storage, network states, and so on—along with analytical data such as performance, usage, and dependencies. There are multiple approaches you can take to migrating your resources, and a partner can carry out the discovery and evaluation step and coach you on the best approach.  

A partner can help you realize the benefits from your migration quicker than you would otherwise. We’ve found that migrations with a partner tend to go 25% faster than those done solo, and also lead to better business outcomes. A shorter migration time helps the entire organization adapt to the AWS platform more smoothly.

Cost optimization

AWS’ pay-as-you-go model makes it easier to save money, but fully optimizing for costs requires ongoing monitoring of what resources are being  used and how. A qualified partner can analyze your total cost of ownership and ensure that you’re not paying for more resources than you need. Mission, for example, provides a comprehensive Cloud Foundation service that optimizes for costs and at the same time provides greater transparency on exactly where your spend is going.

Improve security 

A survey from international cybersecurity professional organization (ISC)2 found that nearly two-thirds of respondents thought their organization’s cybersecurity staff was too small, with a shortage of nearly 500,000 cybersecurity professionals in North America alone. In light of such demand, hiring an internal security team can be prohibitively expensive. Working with an AWS partner provides you with a team of security experts for less than the cost of a full time employee. Mission, for example, provides a comprehensive managed threat detection and response solution.

Reduce Time Spent Managing Infrastructure 

Don’t overlook the fact that working with a partner lets you offload a lot of the undifferentiated heavy lifting. For example, Mission’s Cloud One managed AWS service includes monitoring, backup, and patching of your services, websites, and servers along with regular reviews of performance metrics. That leaves your own staff available to focus on what actually provides value and drives innovation for your business.

This increased attention brings a variety of benefits. Mission worked with Smitty’s Supply, a manufacturer and distributor of lubricants and cleaning products, to migrate their on-premises infrastructure to AWS. Their applications ended up more secure, and the Smitty’s Supply team now has the internal resources to focus on new projects and improvements, rather than maintenance and putting out fires. Additionally, with increased transparency and increased understanding of systems, files believed to be lost have been rediscovered, and connections and group policies that were once the source of issues are now understood and remediated. 

When you’re ready to make the move, contact Mission for a Migration Readiness Assessment. We’ll show you how to make sure your migration pays off in the ways you hope.