From Challenge to Savings: Successful Migration Business Case

To fully leverage the benefits of public cloud, it is essential to build a solid business case.

It all starts with the Business Case. A well-defined business case should:

• Identify migration objectives: What is the goal of migrating to the cloud?
• Evaluate costs and benefits: How much will migration cost, and what benefits are expected?
• Develop a migration plan: How will the migration be carried out?
• Measure success: How will the success of the migration be measured?

Investing in a solid Business Case is an investment in the success of the migration.

Migration to Cloud can be a complex and costly project. Without a well-defined plan, there's a risk that the migration may not meet expectations, generate unexpected costs, and even negatively impact business operations.

A Business Case acts as a guiding force towards migration success. By investing time in its development, the following benefits are gained:

Clarity and justification:

• Defines specific migration objectives, providing clarity to stakeholders.
• Justifies the investment in migration by demonstrating the expected business value.

Planning and strategy:

• Establishes an action plan with the necessary stages and activities for migration.
• Defines the most suitable migration strategy, considering factors such as application types, environment complexity, and business needs.

Evaluation and measurement:

• Sets success metrics to evaluate the impact of migration on the business.
• Enables measurement of Return on Investment (ROI) and demonstrates the value of migration.

Alignment and commitment:

• Aligns stakeholders around migration objectives and benefits.
• Generates commitment to the project, ensuring collaboration and support necessary for its success.

A solid Business Case for migration to the public cloud:

• Reduces project-associated risks.
• Optimizes the use of financial and technical resources.
• Maximizes the chances of migration success.
• Demonstrates the business value of cloud investment.

Without a well-defined Business Case, migration to the public cloud can be a costly, complex process with a high risk of failure.

Common challenges faced without a cloud migration strategy:

• Lack of planning and organization
• Technical incompatibility
• Unexpected costs
• Negative impact on operations
• Difficulties in management and control

Examples of savings due to successful migration to public cloud:

• Time and resource savings through automation and agility: Calculate the time and resources saved by comparing with processes prior to migration. For example, automation of deployment processes can significantly reduce the time required to provision resources, leading to faster application delivery and cost savings in labor hours.
• Cost comparison of cloud security solutions versus on-premise solutions: Evaluate the cost of cloud security solutions compared to on-premise solutions, including hardware, software licenses, maintenance, and staffing. Calculate the savings in investments and costs of preventing attacks. Cloud security solutions often offer pay-as-you-go models, allowing for cost savings through flexible pricing and eliminating upfront hardware costs.
• Subscription models for software licenses: The cloud offers subscription models that allow you to avoid paying for on-premise software licenses. This can result in significant cost savings by eliminating upfront licensing fees and reducing the total cost of ownership over time.
• Automation and operational efficiency: Automation and operational efficiency can reduce the need for dedicated personnel to manage infrastructure. With cloud-native tools and services, tasks such as scaling, monitoring, and maintenance can be automated, leading to cost savings in labor costs and increased productivity.
• Dynamic environment provisioning: Easily create and tear down development and testing environments in the cloud, reducing costs and optimizing resource utilization. With on-demand provisioning of resources, you only pay for what you use, eliminating the need for over-provisioning and reducing infrastructure costs.
• High availability and reduced downtime: The high availability of cloud infrastructure reduces downtime, meaning less time spent troubleshooting issues and more time for innovation. By leveraging cloud-native features such as load balancing, auto-scaling, and geographic redundancy, organizations can minimize downtime and ensure continuous availability of their applications and services.

Essential tools for building a strong Business Case and Migration Plan to AWS:

Cost analysis tools:

AWS Cost Calculator: https://calculator.aws/

Risk assessment tools:
Risk Assessment for Cloud Adoption

Discovery and assessment tools:
AWS Migration Hub: https://aws.amazon.com/migration-hub/
Migration Evaluator: https://aws.amazon.com/migration-evaluator/

Benefits analysis framework:
Cloud Economics: https://aws.amazon.com/economics/resources/

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