5 Transformative Use Cases for AWS Cloud Migration

Nearly 20 years after Amazon launched the first commercial cloud, we still see cloud computing technology evolve significantly. More and more use cases for the cloud are coming to light and enabling organizations in every industry to reap the benefits. In other words, there are many reasons to migrate to the cloud, and no one has to follow a predefined playbook.

In this post, we’ll cover 5 transformative use cases for pursuing an AWS cloud migration:

• Eliminate on-premises IT
• Adopt hybrid cloud architecture
• Switch cloud providers or implement multi-cloud architectures
• Migrate and modernize legacy IT
• Automate and optimize IT processes

We’ll touch on the challenges, solutions, and benefits of each migration strategy and highlight specific projects ClearScale has completed in these areas.

Eliminate On-premise IT

One big reason why organizations are migrating to the cloud is to stop maintaining on-premises IT altogether. On-premises IT is hard to scale and manage. In our fast-moving world, the difference between beating a competitor to market and falling behind could be the time it takes to order, install, and provision new hardware in physical data centers.

At the same time, migrating to the cloud can be intimidating. That’s why AWS offers a multitude of migration services – the AWS Migration Hub, AWS Snow family, and more – to make the transition as easy as possible. At ClearScale, we also help teams assess their own cloud readiness and execute large-scale migrations away from legacy data centers. In fact, we enabled one of our clients to migrate 12 data centers with 6,300 servers to AWS in just 10 months. Eliminating on-premises IT is easier and less risky than ever.

Adopt Hybrid Cloud Architecture

For some enterprises, adopting hybrid cloud architectures is a powerful reason to migrate. In hybrid architectures, some IT processes stay with self-managed data centers and others move to the cloud. This allows teams to maintain tighter control over certain data and applications on-premises while leveraging the benefits of an external cloud vendor for less important workloads. The key to hybrid cloud architectures is ensuring that data can move efficiently and securely between environments and that governance is carefully regulated.

We worked with one company in the utilities space that needed to streamline how on-site employees accessed files in remote locations. We used AWS Storage Gateway – a hybrid cloud storage service – to accomplish our client’s goals while reducing storage costs and ensuring robust user authentication. So long as everything is set up correctly, hybrid cloud architectures can dramatically improve upon IT that is entirely on-premise.

Switch Cloud Providers or Implement Multicloud Architectures

Many organizations are also revisiting their cloud infrastructure given how much cloud technology has advanced. In some cases, IT leaders are deciding to move from one cloud to another to gain access to certain services, capabilities, and programs. We’re also seeing more companies implement multi-cloud architectures to reduce dependency on a single vendor and take advantage of what different service providers do best.

Switching cloud providers and implementing multi-cloud architectures can be complicated in different ways. That’s why it’s helpful to have a team like ClearScale available to ensure there is a positive ROI associated with any change. Here’s an example of a project we completed for a client in the financial services industry. The company wanted to move from Azure to AWS in an aggressive time frame. We executed the Azure-to-AWS migration and set our client up with a more performant and efficient IT ecosystem with tangible financial impact. The takeaway here is that migrations even within the cloud can be tremendously beneficial.

Migrate and Modernize Legacy IT

In most migration projects, there is the potential to also modernize legacy IT. Organizations today are modernizing their applications, databases, and workflows to do things like leverage serverless resources, event-based architecture, and microservices. While making major changes to long-standing IT assets is scary, it’s also invaluable when done correctly.

We executed a project just like this for an organization in the life sciences space that wanted to migrate and modernize Oracle databases on AWS. We developed the roadmap and got our client to Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, putting the client in a much better position to right-size database workloads and maximize performance.

Automate and Optimize IT Processes on AWS

Our final transformative use for pursuing an AWS cloud migration is to automate and optimize essential IT processes. AWS offers managed services, infrastructure automation, and a wide range of tools for monitoring all cloud activity. With the right combination of solutions, it’s possible to improve overall IT productivity while reducing IT expenditures, complexity, and manual effort.

We helped a fintech platform achieve this with a combination of solutions – AWS Control Tower and Terraform. As a result of our work, our client enhanced the security of its underlying cloud foundation while implementing infrastructure automation to accelerate application development.

Unlock Your Full IT Potential on AWS with ClearScale

ClearScale has been helping organizations in every industry migrate to the AWS cloud since 2011. Our team has earned over 100 AWS certifications and the AWS Migration competency, demonstrating our extensive real-world success in this area. We’d be happy to explore any migration and modernization project with you, whether it’s moving a single database or executing a massive transition from an on-premises environment or another cloud to AWS.

Get in touch today to speak with a cloud expert and discuss how we can help:

Call us at 1-800-591-0442
Send us an email at sales@clearscale.com
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You can also see more examples of how we’ve migrated to the AWS cloud, visit this page.