Cloud migration: maximising the returns

In their keynote speech at this month’s AWS London Summit, Mario Thomas and Rotem Yossef, of Amazon Web Services, presented some powerful evidence of how large companies can achieve such a return using AWS technology.

Looking at enterprise companies in the US who had migrated to AWS, they found that after 36 months, the return on investment (ROI) on each dollar spent was $3.50. After 60 months, it was $8.40.

The total cost of ownership (TCO) savings come in four key areas: server cost, storage cost, network cost and IT labour costs.

Why does the ROI increase over time ? For three reasons.

• Firstly, the AWS  programme of continuous innovation, with 700 new products released in 2015 alone, means that there are increasingly more efficient ways of building and delivering services. It’s these incremental savings that, when services are properly managed, give businesses powerful advantages in the long term.
• Secondly, experience. Over time teams get more skilled at using cloud, so they can deliver the same business benefits using less resource .
• Thirdly, AWS have reduced their prices 51 times in the last 10 years. There is no guarantee this pricing model will continue, but it’s a strong part of AWS’ messaging and brand, and not unique in the enterprise technology sector.

Of course, migration to the cloud does not guarantee cost savings. Indeed, cost optimisation is a complex process and forms a significant element of AWS’ professional level certification programme.

Too many businesses have seen a poor return on investment in technologies in the past because of poor implementations, often due to inadequately skilled resources. Such implementations are typified by insufficient planning, inappropriate design and configuration, and a failure to consider strategic business goals.

Conversely, the potential impact on business operations of using the most highly skilled resources on transformation projects deters many from embarking on ambitious, high-return initiatives. Those who do divert internal resource towards the planning and implementation of change programmes, often learn it can have unforeseen and difficult-to-quantify consequences on operational efficiency.

Whatever your circumstances, access to skilled resource is critical to successfully achieving your ROI, but finding appropriately qualified and experienced individuals is becoming increasingly difficult. Globally there are less than two thousand AWS Solution Architects certified to professional level, and demand for their services is rapidly outstripping supply.

Our consultants are not only certified to the highest level, they also have no sentimental attachment to your existing architecture. The intractability of architects when faced with making radical changes to infrastructure was another key barrier to migration touched on by speakers at the AWS Summit, and something C-suite executives without strong technical backgrounds may not be able to challenge.

Our experts are able to consult across your business at executive and operational level to advise on the right migration solution for you. By challenging internally held beliefs about what is possible, drawing on their experience with other clients, our consultants can greatly enhance the returns businesses are able to achieve.

Our own review of our past AWS projects shows that our customers benefit from:

• a faster migration than they could achieve using internal resource
• lower ongoing cost of ownership
• improved scalability, as businesses grow
• enhanced agility
• greater ROI

To explore the support we can give you in achieving your migration and broader business objectives, please talk to our consultants. With so many businesses in all sectors achieving significant ongoing reductions in their IT infrastructure costs, time spent hearing from time-served, highly qualified experts who can conduct proof of concept work on your own systems is an investment in itself.

You  can read more about our AWS Solutions, including case studies here.