Digitization is the new normal and moving workloads to the cloud can be the most advantageous strategic move to keep pace with the speed of digital innovation. Irrespective of the industry and company size, businesses are shifting their focus to cloud migration not just for the ease of accessibility but also for the many advantages, including scalability, security, and flexibility.
Before giving the green light for cloud migration, it’s imperative to consider the AWS cloud migration costs. Encompassing multiple factors, including the cloud setup cost, operational expenses, training, and so on, costs associated with cloud migration need to be a significant part of a well-thought-out strategy.
Why do we need to estimate AWS cloud migration cost?
Estimating a budget required for migrating to the cloud is a crucial step for organizations. AWS application migration service pricing could be the first step to drafting a better financial plan for the future.
According to Statista, by 2025, the market value of cloud migration is projected to reach USD 168.6 billion.
By migrating to the cloud and estimating AWS migration service cost, a business can experience the following advantages:
- Scalable Infrastructure
Migrating to the cloud supports the ability to scale in order to cater to the dynamic industry requirements, enabling agility and accessibility without the need for huge upfront capital investments.
- Cost Efficiency
Having a cost estimation beforehand helps in planning future financial requirements accurately and creating a strategy tailored to meet the organization’s budget constraints.
- Enhanced Innovation
Migrating workloads to the cloud, businesses can easily utilize the vast resources and services that foster innovation, and seamlessly integrate new and advanced technology as and when they become available.
Five Steps for Calculating AWS Migration Cost
Strategic financial planning can empower decision making in terms of allocating the budget. Here are the five steps to calculate AWS Cloud migration pricing:
1. Analyze existing IT infrastructure
Get started with the first step by assessing your existing inventory of IT hardware and software assets. You are required to reach multiple departments within the organization to make sure you’re not missing any existing resources, taking note of all the essential details including contracts, purchase dates, warranty expiration dates, etc. An analysis of the dependencies can help you plan in the right direction.
2. Calculate direct and indirect cost
The next step can be calculating the direct and indirect costs for buying, operating, and maintaining the purchased assets in terms of your IT infrastructure inventory. The direct costs can be classified as software license costs, administrative expenses, operations costs, etc., while indirect costs include something not thought about like productivity loss, operational downtime, customer dissatisfaction, etc. Although calculating the indirect cost can seem like a challenge, you can make the calculation through a downtime calculator online.
3. Calculate the cloud infrastructure cost
As your switch to a cloud environment isn’t fixed or may not be a pre-planned component, it becomes challenging to determine the cost well in advance. However, you can get a rough idea through the Amazon web service pricing calculator, providing services to compare the cost of using AWS to the cost of housing your applications in an on-premises environment.
4. Determine cloud migration cost
Estimate the cost involved in migrating your workloads to the AWS cloud environment through a cloud readiness assessment of your applications/workloads to understand what workloads can easily be moved to the cloud and which may need redesigning. Next in the row is determining the preferred cloud migration method for which you can use the AWS migration cost calculator and AWS cloud migration tools.
5. Estimate the post-migration cost
The process doesn’t end with migrating the workloads, you need to estimate the post-migration cost as well. This includes the continued integration, application testing, security, training, compliance cost, etc. You must ensure these costs are included in your budget planning to make sure you have the closest AWS cloud migration cost estimation.
Categories of cost involved in cloud migration
There can be numerous categories involved in the process of cloud migration, depending on multiple factors including the nature of applications, the amount of data, external support, the cloud migration timeline, and the chosen cloud provider. To help with organizational preparedness, here’s an overview of the categories generally involved in the process.
- Applications and Code Rewriting
Not all applications work perfectly on the cloud, some might need adaptation, while a few might require complete rewriting. This can be considered as the first basic cost to make updates according to the application complexity. The timeline involved in the process is anywhere between a few weeks to a few months depending on the adjustments to be made.
- Utilizing DevOps for Infrastructure and Design
Migrating to the cloud involves creating the needed infrastructure through code with the help of a DevOps Engineer. This involves another set of costs depending on the DevOps members you require to complete the task.
- Volume of Data to be Transferred
More data to be transferred = More cost incurred. Adding up to the migration cost, the amount of data to be migrated leads to bringing in more resources to cater to the requirement. However, the cost also depends on the complexity of your data sets and the size of the organization.
- Migration Timeline and External Support
Speeding up the migration process can save money because it lets the businesses shut down our old infrastructure sooner. Sometimes, you might need help from outside to make the migration easier. The cost of this help depends on how much data we’re moving, how much we already know, and if we need to hire more people. Checking everything on time and getting help from outside makes sure we switch over smoothly without any surprise costs.
Final Thoughts
Migrating your workloads to the cloud isn’t a cakewalk, the above listed five steps are the ones to be taken into consideration to have your cloud migration budget aligned initially. With the help of the right budget planning, organizations can focus on delivering better solutions and making the budget allocated to the right activities. For calculating the exact AWS cloud migration cost you might need a cloud solution provider to help you not just in cost estimation but facilitating you in transitioning to the cloud as well. SourceFuse is one of them!
