Organizations looking to modernize their applications to move to the cloud and transform their business should start their journey with a comprehensive assessment of their workloads so their security and system requirements remain robust.
This is a critical first step to ensure application dependencies are properly identified and maintained to keep operations running smoothly. The necessary regulatory requirements also will be retained, so businesses can remain in compliance.
The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed Asia-Pacific organizations to accelerate their transformation with the goal of achieving higher operational efficiencies and cost savings. It has prompted many to move to the cloud, and this, in turn, has underscored the need for them to modernize their applications to better tap the agility that cloud-native architectures offer.
Much of this focus is on Microsoft Windows workloads, including SQL Server and .NET platforms, which continue to be the foundation of many businesses.
Users frequently access Windows applications and data across the organization and multiple locations, and it can be challenging to support these workloads on premises due to the centralized management and lack of flexibility of such infrastructures.
Costs also escalate quickly with on-premises environments, which are difficult to scale. Higher security risks can surface, too, due to weaker protection around customer data for business-critical Windows workloads and Windows-based applications, including SQL Server, Windows Server, .NET solutions and Active Directory.
Moving their Microsoft applications to a cloud architecture will provide the agility organizations need to remain competitive and responsive in a fast-changing market landscape. Cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) also have made familiar Windows services easier to use, so businesses can more easily adapt to a cloud environment.
For instance, Amazon FSx for Windows File Server is a fully managed, native Microsoft Windows file system that facilitates shared-file storage and includes full support for the protocol as well as Windows NTFS. In addition, AWS Managed Microsoft AD is actually built on Microsoft Active Directory and does not require data to be synchronized or replicated from the existing Active Directory to the cloud.
To further ease migration to its cloud platform, AWS works with qualified partners such as Anchor Systems, which has experience helping enterprise customers plan, design, build, deploy and operate Windows-based workloads on AWS.
AWS also offers various programs and tools to assist in the move, such as the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) for Windows, which provides a three-step approach encompassing best practices and incentives to reduce the complexity and cost of migrating to the cloud.
Included in MAP is a migration readiness assessment that identifies gaps based on the six dimensions of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework, comprising business, process, people, platform, operations and security. This framework highlights all the capabilities you need in the migration and builds a total cost of ownership (TCO) model for the move.
MAP for Windows also encompasses the AWS Optimization and Licensing Assessment (OLA), which is provided at no cost to customers. OLA offers recommendations on how to best optimize your licenses on AWS. It helps customers assess and optimize their current on-premises and cloud environments as well as demonstrate potential savings on AWS Cloud.
Performing an audit assessment of your workloads, including user access, allows you to identify technical considerations essential to the move. This also is necessary to provide a more comprehensive TCO assessment and deliver a clear return on investment for your cloud adoption.
Flying High on Cost Efficiencies With Infrastructure Optimization
Touchpoint Global is one of many AWS customers that have reaped the benefits of transforming their IT environment.
The Sydney-based aviation software vendor provides a range of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications that are delivered across various infrastructures. Over time, this became increasingly tedious to manage internally and was driving up costs.
When revenues dipped as travel came to a standstill during the pandemic, Touchpoint realized it had to identify ways to gain better cost efficiencies, specifically in its cloud consumption.
It needed to reduce the risks associated with traditional hosting solutions and, at the same time, ensure its SaaS offerings remained available to its customers across the Asia-Pacific region and Europe.
In optimizing its cloud costs, Touchpoint also hoped to achieve further cost savings for its customers, which include airlines and caterers that use its software to plan inflight services such as cleaning and meals.
Anchor's AWS specialists were brought in to assess Touchpoint's infrastructure and management requirements and put together a robust, high-availability environment that leveraged Amazon's EC2, S3 storage and RDS (Relational Database Service). Anchor also architected a secure AWS environment for Windows MS SQL Database.
The AWS solutions offer predictability and scalability, enabling Touchpoint to better manage its costs even amid fluctuating demand. It ensures the software vendor's SaaS applications can be quickly accessed worldwide, with high availability, and easily scaled up as air travel resumes.
By restructuring its consumption of cloud-based resources and re-architecting shared services, Touchpoint was able to cut down the number of accounts and remove sprawl. It consolidated workloads and optimized duplicated services, which slashed the company's infrastructure and operational costs.
It modernized its applications to run on AWS, reducing the cost of running Windows workloads. The optimization of its IT environment and its transition to a serverless, highly scalable infrastructure are projected to cut Touchpoint's application deployment costs by 65%.
Furthermore, by outsourcing the management of its AWS instances to Anchor at a fraction of the cost of hiring in-house technicians, Touchpoint is able to gain more savings and direct its focus on higher value business activities.
Begin your Windows migration journey with AWS and Anchor
