Unlocking the Power of Cloud Mobilization With AWS

Organizations embarking on a cloud migration often share similar insights. Whether speaking to those who have successfully navigated this transition or those who have faced challenges, a common theme emerges — without thorough planning and preparation, achieving a successful migration becomes an uphill battle.

A full-scale cloud migration involves far more than replicating your existing on-premises infrastructure in a cloud environment. To unlock the full potential of cloud computing, you must address both the technical and organizational aspects of this transformation. This includes aligning the processes and capabilities of your people while ensuring that your technology operates under a framework that supports efficiency, scalability and governance.

While the promise of cloud computing — utility-based pricing, near-infinite scalability and rapid deployment — is enticing, many organizations fall into the trap of treating the cloud as merely an extension of their on-premises data center. This limited viewpoint can create challenges, as applying traditional operational principles to a cloud-native environment can lead to inefficiencies, governance gaps and ballooning costs.

Unrestricted scalability and rapid provisioning can lead to financial unpredictability and governance issues if not properly managed. This is where governance frameworks become essential. Leveraging the cloud as more than a virtual replica of your data center involves adopting a strategic approach that takes full advantage of its unique capabilities while mitigating potential risks.

A proven best practice to guide your cloud migration is the establishment of a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE). A CCoE is an organizational team that brings together cross-functional stakeholders, aligning technical expertise with business leadership, finance, security, legal and compliance. Through this structured collaboration, the CCoE develops and enforces policies around cloud adoption, security, cost management and risk mitigation.

The CCoE acts as the driving force in cloud governance, ensuring that the organization’s cloud strategy supports operational goals while maintaining efficiency, compliance and cost control. By fostering shared knowledge across departments, this framework not only streamlines cloud adoption but also empowers the organization to innovate with confidence.

Another critical component of successful cloud migration planning is the creation of a structured AWS Landing Zone. Defined by AWS as a “well-architected, multi-account AWS environment that is scalable and secure,” a landing zone serves as a framework for deploying workloads and applications quickly and securely.

The multi-account structure of a landing zone brings inherent benefits to governance and operations. It simplifies the correlation of cloud costs to specific teams, projects and applications while hardening overall security by isolating workloads. By setting a foundational framework for your migration, AWS Landing Zones instill confidence in both security and operational agility.

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Before scaling your migration across the enterprise, a pilot migration is essential. This phase involves replatforming a low-risk, non-critical workload with minimal dependencies to the cloud. Selecting such a workload ensures that any unexpected disruption will have a minimal impact on operations.

Running a pilot migration allows your organization to build operational competency, refine its migration processes, and identify areas for improvement prior to tackling larger, more complex workloads. By addressing potential challenges early, your team will be better prepared for the demands of a full-scale migration.

While some organizations may undertake these efforts independently, relying on AWS’s extensive training resources, others opt to accelerate their transition with the support of a trusted partner. CDW’s Cloud Mobilize Engagement (CME) for AWS provides the expertise and guidance needed to streamline your cloud migration, reducing risk and accelerating timelines.

With CME for AWS, CDW’s cloud experts will work directly with your organization to:

• Establish a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) with clearly defined roles and responsibilities.
• Build a secure, well-architected AWS Landing Zone aligned to industry best practices.
• Collaboratively execute a pilot migration, helping your team gain hands-on experience and master the intricacies of scalable migrations.

This approach allows your organization to confidently transition to the cloud while ensuring that your processes, governance and security frameworks are fully optimized.

Cloud migration is a complex, yet critical, business transformation. It necessitates robust planning, adherence to best practices and collaboration across teams — all while ensuring minimal disruption to operational workflows. CDW’s AWS expertise empowers organizations to rise to these challenges with proven strategies and personalized solutions.

Whether you are at the beginning stages of readiness assessment or preparing to scale your cloud adoption, CDW’s collaborative approach ensures that your migration is efficient, secure and aligned with your business goals.