For the last decade, organisations have been migrating and then modernising their Microsoft Workloads in the AWS Cloud - and now there are millions of them. IDC surveyed 12 major organisations across a variety of industry verticals to distil the top six reasons why you should make that journey to the Cloud.
1. Higher Reliability & Performance
It is no secret that organisations run on AWS Cloud because they can’t afford their systems to be down, and AWS provides a bewildering number of features and services to establish and run a most robust environment. But how do you put a value on that reliability? In the survey, IDC quantified the reduction in unplanned downtime at 98%. What could you achieve across your organisation with that kind of reduction?
Likewise, development teams enjoy greater agility and are simply able to do things faster in a Well Architected AWS Cloud environment. A known and unsurprising fact, but how does that translate into value for your organisation? In IDC’s survey, it translated into a 65-71% faster deployment with Windows on AWS. A compelling reason for anyone developing and deploying their apps in a Windows environment.
2. Greater Security & Identity Management
AWS provides a comprehensive suite of security and identity services and features to enable you to improve your ability to meet core security and compliance requirements, such as data locality, protection, and confidentiality.
3. More Migration Experience
AWS has over a decade of unmatched experience in migrating Microsoft Workloads from large global organisations such as Sony and Expedia, across innumerable public sector organisations down to small and medium-sized businesses. It has the most extensive library of cases, covering thousands of successful migrations, and also a plethora of tools and services to assist migrations.
These are not just limited to the ‘mechanical’ tools such as CloudEndure to automate the drudgery of migrating server after server, but also include a number of tools and services to evaluate and optimise the business benefits of migration.
For example, Migration Evaluator discovers what you have on-premise, how it's used, and how much it costs to operate — and then determines what the costs would be, with right-sizing, on AWS. It also analyses Microsoft-specific workloads and makes suggestions for optimised Microsoft licensing strategies.
PolarSeven can bring the necessary services and tools to all stages of your journey to Windows in the Cloud - whether you are just starting at the Assessment stage, or are looking to modernise to capitalise on your migration.
4. Broadest & Deepest Capabilities
It’s a fact that AWS is simply bigger and broader than any of its competitors, and has significantly more capabilities than any of them.
Ecosystem Support
AWS supports a full range of business critical services for Microsoft workloads like Visual Studio, Active Directory, Windows Server, SQL Server, AWS SDK for .NET, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, and AWS Database Migration Service.
AWS also offers the first and only fully managed native Windows file service, Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, which is built on Windows and integrates with Active Directory.
A million+ customers can’t be wrong
With millions of customers that trust Amazon EC2 to support their workloads - AWS has the broadest customer base for Windows compute. With a mission to serve every imaginable workload, the number of satisfied customers running Windows in the Cloud will only continue to grow - and diversify.
5. Lower Total Cost of ‘Ownership’
When IDC conducted in-depth interviews with the twelve large organisations to quantify the cost for these organisations of running their Microsoft workloads on AWS compared with the cost of ownership of their previous IT infrastructure environments, IDC’s research demonstrated that participants are capturing significant benefits in the form of operational efficiencies, flexibility, and improved performance in addition to the costs of having the IT infrastructure available to run their workloads. They have optimised their Windows environments to accommodate growth, match business demand, and achieve business growth in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
Based on interviews with these organisations, IDC quantifies the value they will achieve by running Windows workloads on AWS at an average of US$ 157,300 per 100 users per year, or US$1573 per user per year.
6. Flexible Licensing Options
AWS has three flexible approaches to Microsoft licensing:
BYOL with License Mobility
Customers can bring their own licenses to AWS with Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts, Amazon EC2 Dedicated Instances, or Amazon EC2 Instances with default tenancy using Microsoft License Mobility through Software Assurance.
PAYG flexible choices
By purchasing Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (Amazon EC2) or Amazon Relational Database Services (Amazon RDS) license-included instances, you get new, fully compliant Windows Server and SQL Server licenses from AWS built-in. This means you only pay for what you use and the licensing is included within your AWS billing.
Dedicated Options
For Microsoft products without License Mobility we can create dedicated options for your Microsoft licensing arrangements.
Bottom Line
As demonstrated by the organisations surveyed by IDC, and the millions of others already running their Microsoft Workloads in the AWS Cloud, there really are six very good reasons to migrate and modernise your Microsoft Workloads in the Cloud.
PolarSeven can help you get started with a p7-OLA - PolarSeven’s Optimisation & Licensing Assessment - which can tell you how much you stand to gain by moving your Microsoft Workloads to AWS Cloud.
Read more about p7-OLA or book a meeting (using the link below the form) where we can discuss your unique circumstances.
Complete the form below to access the link to download your PDF copy of the IDC Report.