Amazon Web Services (AWS) has created a program with selected partners to help provide clients with tools and migration expertise to reduce licensing costs and compute charges...

Moving to the Cloud is a daunting task, and can easily become an expensive endeavor without proper planning and reviewing of your workloads. One of the easiest ways to avoid spending more when migrating to the cloud is to evaluate your compute and licensing needs. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has created a program with selected partners to help provide clients with tools and migration expertise to reduce licensing costs and compute charges. With AWS’ business model designed to pay for what you use, there is no reason to provision resources that you don’t need.

With AWS’ business model designed to pay for what you use, there is no reason to provision resources that you don’t need.

AWS has created the Optimization and Licensing Assessment (OLA) program to address this exact problem. This program was created to provide clients with tooling and partners who are experienced in moving and navigating the license requirements of their workloads. The program provides both the client and partner with a tool – based on their needs – to evaluate workloads, determine the resources needed, make price estimates, and create cost-saving models. The OLA program has saved clients up to 40% on their projected environment cost and enabled them to save money in the first phase of their cloud journey. By using this program, clients receive the following benefits:

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Accurate workload identification:

Many clients are not aware of all of the servers within their environment. Leveraging the AWS OLA program can help with this. The program’s tools can perform a full discovery of everything within your environment, enabling you to identify which resources you wish to migrate, retain on-premises, or retire.

Custom cost models based on resource consumption:

Reviewing your workloads manually takes time and is prone to human error when rightsizing. This can leave you spending thousands of dollars extra a month in the cloud that could be easily avoided. While using a tool can reduce human error, EPI-USE AWS will help refine recommendations and navigate the different cost options while moving to the cloud. Nothing is worse than adopting new technology only to discover that you’ve spent more than needed.

Licensing options and discovery:

The OLA program can also be used to discover your current Microsoft licensing usage and help provide cost recommendations based on that use. Over the last few years, Microsoft has changed some of the licensing rules on what can and cannot be leveraged within cloud providers. However,  this doesn’t mean that current licenses are not valid or cannot be used. AWS license  included and client ‘bring your own licensing’ pricing options will be explored, discussed, and modeled to provide an accurate cost estimate.

Client obsession:

EPI-USE AWS Services has a bit of an obsession with our clients, making sure they are well informed about their options, and then providing recommendations, based on their needs and desires. There is never a ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to migrating workloads, and each workload needs to be evaluated and planned accordingly.

The OLA program starts with a discussion with our Solution Architects on the workload, to dive deeper into the client's needs and their goals for moving to AWS.

The OLA program starts with a discussion with our Solution Architects on the workload, to dive deeper into the client's needs and their goals for moving to AWS.

We then work with the client to collect the necessary data with the approved tool. This can be a combination of flat-file, agent, or agentless discovery, and is based on client needs and the workload size. The data collected is targeted to CPU, memory, networking and disk activity, and utilization.  During this phase, the collection tool will monitor the desired systems and record monitored activity levels. After a few weeks of capturing resource usage, we analyze the information to create a cost model, based on earlier discussions and optimized resources.

Once the information is ready, we share it with the client and help create a business case and migration plan for moving these workloads over to EPI-USE AWS. This can be as simple as a proof of concept for a smaller internal application. Alternatively, it could be a full detailed migration and then steps to provide the client with a cloud adoption roadmap. If you choose EPI-USE AWS, we can provide AWS funding options to offset the cost of moving workload.

Call us today to see if your workload is eligible for the program! We can look at your specific challenges and provide you with expert advice on moving to the cloud.