Cloud integration should be at the forefront of every business's strategy, allowing your team to concentrate on delivering value, while minimizing capital expenses. For growing businesses, the flexibility of expanding infrastructure only as needed, combined with a pay-as-you-go subscription model, makes planning and budgeting more efficient and responsive.
AWS Cloud leads the way in optimization, hosting a diverse range of workloads. With more Windows-based workloads than any other provider, and with Graviton processors offering 40% cost reduction for ARM-compiled tasks, AWS boasts over 250 services and 350 different compute types to suit your specific needs.
Embracing AWS not only means a 37% decrease in costs but also enhanced reliability, security, and a 75% increase in agility. The unburdening of your IT department from mundane server maintenance tasks liberates them to focus on what truly adds value to the business. With 81 availability zones across 25 regions ensuring uptime of 99.999%, AWS offers high availability without prohibitive costs.
Moreover, AWS stands as a benchmark in cloud security, providing services that enable comprehensive protection of your cloud resources. The partnership and offerings of AWS, like the AWS MAP program, serve as a roadmap to further success and innovation. Whether your business is looking to scale, innovate, or secure its processes, AWS and particularly the AWS MAP program can be the catalyst to unlock new horizons. Let's dive in and see why the AWS MAP initiative is the right play for any business looking to move to the cloud.
Optimizing Cloud Migration: An Introduction to AWS MAP and the InfoMagnus Partnership with Pacific Dental Services.
AWS understands that the initial step most organizations take toward cloud adoption involves migrating away from their existing data centers. To facilitate a smooth and successful migration, the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) offers a host of advantageous features to its customers, including:
- A prescriptive, step-by-step guide tailored for migrating workloads to AWS.
- Specialized AWS services engineered specifically to facilitate smooth migrations.
- Financial support from AWS, earmarked for qualified AWS partners to assist customers throughout the critical migration phases of Assessment, Mobilization, and Migration itself.
Pacific Dental Services (PDS) chose to collaborate with InfoMagnus, an AWS Advanced Tier Partner, to leverage their expertise during the AWS MAP Assessment phase. PDS elected to undertake an AWS MAP assessment as they recognized the crucial role AWS could play in hosting their complex technical stack. They understood that to navigate the intricate migration landscape successfully, the guidance of the MAP program, and a qualified partner like InfoMagnus, was essential.
Another incentive was the lower barrier to entry; the program allowed busy IT professionals at PDS to delegate migration assessment activities to AWS Partner InfoMagnus, thus freeing internal resources for other strategic initiatives.
Guiding Success: AWS MAP's Comprehensive Approach to Workload Migrations, Backed by Proven Strategies and Financial Support.
AWS MAP is a prescriptive guide for workload migrations to AWS. This guidance was developed internally by AWS after tens of thousands of successful migrations. The guidance has proven effective as it provides motivation and a comprehensive approach to migration. Additionally, AWS will provide funding for AWS partners to assist with the migration efforts. The funding varies by phases and is distributed after completion of milestones.
Assess Phase: During this phase, a business case was created by InfoMagnus leveraging AWS services for inventory discovery, total cost of ownership (TCO) comparison, and workshops to assess PDS’s migration readiness. This resulted in a case for change that opened the next phase of migration, including:
- Mobilization Phase: AWS reviews the business case from the Assess, and approved InfoMagnus to proceed with the Mobilization Phase. This phase also included AWS funding to offset the customer’s cost of the work of InfoMagnus. This phase is to define how the migration will proceed.
- Migration Phase: Resources are moved to AWS. They are tagged with a specific code that lets AWS track the services consumed, which then returns money back to the customer in the form of credits.
Preparation Meets Opportunity: A Comprehensive Guide to AWS MAP Assessment with Insights from the Pacific Dental Case.
Embarking on an AWS MAP Assessment is not a task to be taken lightly. It requires meticulous preparation, alignment, and understanding of the platform. From setting aside dedicated time for the team to engage in the process to ensuring executive sponsorship, every detail matters.
The success of the MAP is contingent on a well-coordinated effort that includes a one-day Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA) workshop, requiring participation from a broad spectrum of the customer's experts. In the case of Pacific Dental, the challenges were multifaceted, ranging from a busy staff slow to adopt new technologies to a specific need for AWS expertise.
Let's take a look at the essential elements to prepare before embarking on an AWS MAP Assessment, highlighting the unique requirements and challenges faced by Pacific Dental, and how these shaped the assessment preparation. Whether it's understanding the AWS platform or creating an AWS account, every step is crucial in ensuring a smooth and successful migration.
Essential Preparations for a Successful AWS MAP Assessment:
- Allocate Team Time: The AWS MAP process requires time commitment from your team to ensure everyone is assigned tasks, due dates, and remains focused on the final outcome. An integral part of the MAP Assessment is the Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA), a one-day workshop involving a cross-functional set of experts from the customer side—spanning strategy to infrastructure. Early commitment to the MRA is crucial for successful migration.
- Executive Sponsorship: A vital component to the success of any MAP is having an executive sponsor within the customer organization. This individual sets priorities and provides leadership, significantly accelerating the MAP process. An effective executive sponsor ensures that the migration project maintains momentum and doesn't stagnate due to shifts in team focus.
- Basic AWS Understanding and Account Setup: To proceed with the MAP Assessment, customers must have at least a rudimentary understanding of the AWS platform and set up an AWS account. AWS offers specialized services that assist in asset discovery, inventory management, and business case development, all of which require customer-side access for configuration and setup.
Specifics of the Pacific Dental Case: Challenges and Unique Requirements
When Pacific Dental Services embarked on their journey to the cloud through the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP), they faced distinct challenges: a busy staff, cautious tech adoption, and a gap in AWS expertise. The partnership with InfoMagnus, an AWS Partner, proved to be instrumental in navigating these hurdles, offering invaluable guidance and skill throughout the migration assessment process.
- Busy Staff: The staff at Pacific Dental were often occupied with other responsibilities, making the role of an AWS Partner like InfoMagnus even more critical.
- Slow Adoption: The organization had a cautious approach toward new technologies, making the guidance from the AWS MAP program and a knowledgeable partner invaluable.
- Expertise Gap: There was a clear need for AWS expertise, emphasizing the importance of a qualified partner in the assessment process.
Unlocking Successful Cloud Migration: How the Migration Readiness Assessment and InfoMagnus' Expert Use of MPA Shape Your AWS Journey.
The migration readiness assessment helps to identify gaps along the six dimensions of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework: business, process, people, platform, operations, and security. This assessment identifies the capabilities required in the migration and build a TCO model for your migration project.
AWS provides several services that gather data about the servers to be migrated and to organize and plan the migration of the servers and applications. InfoMagnus used the Migration Portfolio Assessment (MPA) tool. This tool is not available to AWS customers. The MPA can only be used by an AWS employee or an approved partner.
Features of the MPA Service:
- Manage portfolio data
- Import and validate portfolio data with a flexible import workflow and customizable data validation rules.
Collect Portfolio Data:
- Request and collect application, server and database data from the subject matter experts via customizable questionnaires.
Estimate AWS Usage Cost:
- Compute: EC2, VMware Cloud on AWS
- Storage: EBS, EFS, S3, Glacier
- Database: RDS
- Network cost estimation.
- IT labor and support cost estimation.
Prioritize Applications:
- Rank applications based on the business and technical drivers of the migration.
Compare AWS and On-Premises Costs:
- See detailed cost and cash flow comparison between AWS and on-premises analysis in both numeric and graphical formats.
Create Application Groups:
- Create application groups by analyzing dependencies to understand which applications must migrate together.
Estimate Migration Project Cost:
- Estimate the cost of an on-premises to AWS migration project.
Build a Migration Wave Plan:
- Generate a wave plan for application groups. MPA helps to consider an application’s priority, data collection status and dependencies so that migration can start sooner with fewer potential roadblocks.
Recommend Migration Strategies:
- Recommend the migration strategy (Rehost, Replatform, Rearchitect) for the servers and applications in the portfolio.
Visualize Portfolio:
- Visualize the portfolio data through customizable charts.
AWS does provide several equivalent tools that customers will find in the AWS Portal.
Overcoming Challenges with Positivity: How PDS Succeeded in the Assess Phase of the AWS MAP Journey.
PDS is a great customer to work with. They immediately understood the value of MAP. With a small, 6-week window to get through the assessment, there were several interruptions that slowed the assessment. These interruptions ranged from vacation time to competing interests from other projects.
The simplest was to get the inventory of servers that need to be migrated, while it was more difficult to complete the assessment of PDS organizational readiness for the migration. Still, with a positive attitude and a prescriptive process, the Assess phase was a success.
Unlocking the Power of Readiness Reviews: Post-Assessment Insights for a Seamless Cloud Migration.
The readiness review, conducted as part of the post-assessment analysis, offers organizations a comprehensive snapshot of their preparedness for cloud migration. This review leads to three fundamental outcomes: gauging an organization's current stage in its cloud journey, pinpointing areas of strength and weakness, and formulating an actionable plan to address those gaps.
Furthermore, the process fosters team alignment, reveals best practices to be scaled, and minimizes disruptive roadblocks, thereby setting the stage for a more streamlined and efficient cloud migration.
Three outcomes from a readiness review:
- An understanding of where an organization is in its cloud journey.
- Identified areas of strength and weakness from a cloud-readiness perspective.
- An action plan to resolve the identified gaps, so the organization can migrate at scale without having to pause to solve foundational issues.
- Alignment and consensus building within the team.
- Identification of best practices within the organization that can be leveraged and scaled.
- A reduction in roadblocks that can disrupt progress.
Guiding the Way: Key Takeaways from Pacific Dental's Successful AWS MAP Assessment with InfoMagnus.
Navigating the complexities of cloud migration can be daunting, but Pacific Dental's experience with the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) assessment serves as an illuminating case study. Not only did the MAP assessment justify the project's disruptions through AWS-provided funding, but it also garnered crucial customer focus on the advantages of migration. Partnering with InfoMagnus allowed Pacific Dental to fully leverage AWS capabilities without having to become experts themselves.
In this examination, we'll look into how this partnership fueled Pacific Dental's migration success and reveal key lessons other organizations can apply for their own cloud journeys.
How the MAP assessment impacted Pacific Dental's migration to AWS.
The MAP assessment is a great tool for driving activity and commitment from a customer. The customer found that funding provided by AWS justified the disruptions, while getting them focused on the advantages of migrating to AWS.
InfoMagnus assisted the customer with their journey by providing expertise and guidance so that the customer did not need to be an expert in AWS to immediately leverage the advantages provided by the cloud platform.
Key learnings that other companies can take away from Pacific Dental's experience.
AWS has provided the MAP to provide prescriptive guidance and funding to improve the success of a migration within a reasonable timeframe. InfoMagnus has learned that although these enticements will make the journey easier, it is important to secure commitment from the customer to provide the right people at the right time. This can be difficult considering the competing projects and deliveries that most customers are also focused upon.
It is key to identify one or more champions at the customer who will work from within to encourage participation from stakeholders and subject matters experts so that delays are minimized and the assessment is complete.
