The AWS Workload Migration Assessment is a complimentary service that helps you plan and optimize your move to AWS. It analyzes your current IT infrastructure and applications to give you a clear, data-backed view of how to approach migration.

During the assessment, AWS (or a partner) collects detailed information about your environment, including:

• Current infrastructure and resource utilization
• Licensing entitlements and usage patterns
• Application dependencies and compatibility

Using this data, you receive actionable recommendations on how to:

• Right-size resources for migration
• Identify modernization opportunities
• Align your cloud strategy with long-term business goals

The goal is to help you rethink and reshape your cloud strategy so you can avoid costly missteps later and make more confident, informed decisions.

The assessment focuses heavily on cost optimization and typically uncovers a range of savings opportunities. Based on the data collected from your environment, it can:

• Identify 20–30 cost reduction opportunities through:
  • Right-sizing over- or under-utilized resources
  • Using Reserved Instances where appropriate
  • Eliminating unused or underused resources (waste)
• Recommend optimal configurations for instance types, storage, and architectures that maintain or improve performance while lowering spend.
• Highlight licensing savings by showing where you can reduce Microsoft and other software licensing costs using:
  • AWS Bring Your Own License (BYOL) programs
  • License Mobility options
  • Native AWS services that may be more cost-effective than existing tools

By combining infrastructure right-sizing with licensing optimization, the assessment helps you reimagine your cost structure before you migrate, rather than discovering issues after you are already in the cloud.

The AWS Workload Migration Assessment is designed to give you more than a static inventory. You can expect:

• Holistic visibility into your IT environment, including dependencies that could impact migration timelines or risk.
• Prioritized recommendations for which workloads to move, modernize, or optimize first, based on cost, complexity, and business impact.
• Concrete cost and licensing scenarios that show how different migration and modernization choices affect your budget.
• Guidance on future scalability so your cloud architecture can grow with your business, not work against it.

These insights help you rethink your migration roadmap, streamline planning, and ensure your cloud investments are aligned with long-term business objectives rather than just short-term technical fixes.