Perform an accurate Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for your AWS migration
Undertaking a change in a business environment often requires a business case or a proposal. A Business Case should state the Objective for the change proposed. It should also cover Options that were considered with a Recommended Option based on the Costs and Benefits analysis, highlight Risks and Mitigation strategy. A high-level Migration Plan should also be attached along with other key business requirements such as a training plan.
In this blog I will focus on the Costs and Benefits often calculated by performing a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
Define the scope of migration
Every migration has a Business Driver which can help you to identify the scope of the migration. It can be a compelling event such as a Data Center exit or meeting the growth requirements of the company. Use that driver to identify the scope in a measurable units that often equates to
- Servers
- Virtual Machines
- Storage appliances
- Network devices
- Firewall and security appliances
Identify these resources that must be considered for the migration program.
Apply Business Context
The on-premises infrastructure is used to run systems that provide services to your internal and external customers. These services can be categorised into Workloads and further broken down by environments (eg dev/test/prod). Without the business context you just have a list of servers which will not provide you an accurate estimates for your business proposal. The business requirements will offer insights into each workload, identify the Migration Strategy appropriate of each workload, factor-in performance and availability requirements (based on SLAs and OLAs).
Capturing data
Information about these systems and workloads are often scattered in different places and it can be really hard to collate this information without going through a significant and often costly exercise. AWS has recognised this problem early-on, they have developed the Migration Acceleration Program to de-risk this exercise for their potential customers.
AWS has developed a few discovery tools and also patterned with multiple companies to offer that capability. The AWS discovery tools don’t have any licensing costs and the partner tools can vary from free to paid licenses. The discovery tool costs may be offset by AWS. You should engage with either AWS or an AWS Migration Competency partner such as Consegna — A CyberCX Company for further guidance.
Some of the tools available are.
- Migration Evaluator (formerly TSO Logic)
- AWS Application Discovery Service
- Flexera
- Cloudamize
This is not a complete list. There are many other vendors available. Don’t worry there is help available in selecting the appropriate tool. This blog offers such guidance. The AWS marketplace is a good place to search for more tools.
These discovery tools can help you in
- Recording resource utilisation (CPU, Memory, Storage, Network utilisation etc) over a certain time period. Be sure to capture those monthly reporting runs.
- Creating a map of applications and services
- Providing a dependency mapping — internal and external (Databases, external APIs etc)
- Linking applications and databases
- Providing a high-level migration plan based on the AWS 7R Migration Strategies (the tools recommendation may not be reliable though as it lacks the human knowledge about the systems)
- Grouping these applications into Migration Waves
Current costs
It can be often hard to collate information about how much the current infrastructure is actually costing your business. You should be able to use the Scope and data captured by the discovery tools to identify costs for each resource. AWS and Migration Competency Partners have access to tools that can help you perform the calculations to estimate your current costs. The tools factor in almost all the variables such as costs for servers, rack, power, admin salaries to name a few. I have performed many of these calculations. It’s a very collaborative process where customers are consulted constantly to validate any assumptions and provide input at every step of the way. These estimates prove to be accurate once they are validated by your business partners, IT managers and finance.
AWS Costs
The tool above can also help you to calculate the projected AWS costs but it’s limited to mostly Rehost, Replatform and Relocate scenarios. The workloads that are proposed to be ReArchitected can be priced by using the AWS Pricing Calculator. I find this combination to be very powerful in creating an accurate picture as it applies the business context (eg where workloads must be Re-Architected to meet the product growth your company is going through).
Migration Costs
As you would expect, performing this change would cost your business. It is important to consider the cost of change which can be in the form of Training your staff or getting professional services to perform full or partial migration. The calculation tool offers very rudimentary capability in calculating migration costs as it lacks business context. You may have an AWS Landing Zone which will require further tuning and enhancements before you migrate these workloads or you have also incorporated an AI/ML project as part of this migration. I often work with customers to discover such information and include it in the migration efforts.
What-if analysis
AWS offers a variety of pricing options based on the commitment level you as a business is comfortable with. You have the option to pay as you go or realise discounts in exchange for your commitment to the platform that comes in the form of a Savings Plan and Reserved Instances. There are other discount plans available also.
Your AWS cost analysis must include these scenarios and propose a recommended pricing option. Once again I rely on customer input to discover which pricing option provides the biggest benefit (the cheapest option is not always the best).
Compare the two
How do the AWS costs compare with On-Premises costs? Your analysis must compare costs for all the Workloads and underlying infrastructure, including the licensing, support, labour and any other variable costs.
You should be able to project these costs over a 3–5 year period based on the hardware refresh cycle. It can help you identify your Return on Investment and the breakeven timeframes.
Conclusion
This is a high-level approach that can help you understand the process before you embark on this journey. I have deliberately avoided business and technical jargon where possible. There is extensive documentation available to break down each step but I often find customers getting disoriented by the vastness of information. I am glad to say that AWS and their partners go above and beyond to help customers with this journey. There is help available to conduct this exercise. Do reach out to either Me, AWS or Consegna or any other Migration Competency partner you prefer.
