Péter Stein, AWS Business Development Manager for the CEE region, and Tomás Tóth, Regional Manager at AWS, presented cost-effective migration opportunities for IT resources to the audience of our recent webinar, including the benefits of the Optimization and Licensing Assessment (OLA) and the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) through a customer example. Noventiq is the only solution provider recognized as AWS Premier Consulting Partner, as it offers customers the highest level of service. AWS helps its potential and existing customers with many programs to provide a truly flexible and high-quality service, such as OLA and MAP. 

AWS Optimization and Licensing Assessment

The AWS Optimization and Licensing Assessment  (OLA) is a free add-on program that allows both new and existing customers to evaluate and optimize their on-premises and cloud-based environments to increase resource efficiency. OLA provides a comprehensive report on resource utilization, third-party licenses, and application dependencies, and, based on that, it outlines a possible cost-saving path by using the AWS cloud service. Ideal for customers with Windows environments to learn about their options and for Azure users to compare their current cloud service with the offerings provided by AWS. During the analysis, Noventiq uses a toolset to analyze on-premises systems, measure the utilization of VMs and physical resources, and analyze processor computing capacity, memory and storage utilization. It only assesses essential data that is not used to access confidential information, so all of the customer’s data and information is secure. From the data, experts examine the utilization of the IT environment to help customers optimize resources and costs. At the end of the examination, customers receive aggregated information about the utilization of their IT environment, as well as cost models corresponding to resource utilization, allowing them to make decisions based on real data. 

As demonstrated by a customer project during the webinar, OLA enables significant cost savings. Noventiq examined thirteen days, analyzing data from 318 servers out of a total of 442 in operation, 270 Windows-based and 48 Linux-based. The survey revealed that 28% of the servers operated by the organization (124 in total) were not used at all during the thirteen days, while the costs of SQL and other licenses were paid by the organization all this time. While CPU utilization was only 7% at the time of the study, storage capacity was 50%, but memory utilization was constantly above 90%. The usage time was also only 33%. 

The first round of examination was followed by the analyses of server dependencies, storage and licensing.  The license analysis revealed that the organization had 68 core MSSQL Standard licenses, purchased in 2016 with Software Assurance. During the financial analysis, Noventiq examined the expected costs of AWS migration along four different strategies:

• Mixed Tenancy - SOL and Windows Server modeled to Dedicated Hosts with Bring Your Own Licence (BYOL) when cost effective. Remaining modeled to Shared Tenancy. AIL Reserved Instances (RIs). Assumed storage utilization = 50% of provisioned storage. 
• Modeled to Shared Tenancy. Reserved Instances (RIs) with Windows Server license included (LI). BYOL SOL Server – Recuires active Software Assurance (SA). Assumed storage utilization = 50% of provisioned storage. 
• Modeled to Shared Tenancy. Reserved Instances (RIs) with Windows & SOL Server License included (LI). Assumed storage utilization = 50% of provisioned storage. 
• Mixed Tenancy - SOl and Windows Server modeled to Dedicated Hosts with BYOL when cost effective. Remaining modeled to Shared Tenancy. All Reserved Instances (RIs). Assumed storage utilization = 50% of provisioned storage

Although it followed different cloud migration strategies, all four solutions resulted in significant savings of 62 to 71 percent in the cost analysis. 

With the help of AWS modernizations such as AWS Lambda, a serverless platform to run code without managing the underlying hardware, additional cost reductions can be achieved. Significant savings can also be achieved if the customer switches from their current database, whether SQL Standard or SQL Enterprise, to the AWS DynamoDB database. AWS DynamoDB is a fully managed, serverless, key-value NoSQL database designed to run high-performance applications at any scale. At Noventiq’s recommendation, the customer chose this solution, with which the previous 68 core MSSQL Standard licenses could be reduced to 48 in the AWS system. Of course, when it comes to modernization, both the database and the operating system can be replaced with open-source options; Elastic Compute Cloud instances can be converted to containers, or existing workloads may be automatically scaled—all of which are supported by Noventiq and AWS. 

OLA is provided free of charge by AWS to both new and existing customers. As an AWS Premier Consulting Partner, Noventiq has all the permissions and full-scale expertise to perform OLA. 

AWS Migration Acceleration Program

After the assessment, the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) applies a result-oriented methodology to help customers accelerate cloud migration and cloud modernization. With MAP’s three-phase framework (Assess, Mobilize, and Migrate & Modernize), customers can reduce costs and risks. In addition to tools to automate and accelerate implementation, AWS also provides customers with broad expert support and AWS investment. During the cloud migration process, Noventiq provides customers with continuous end-to-end advice and support, as well as subscription management.  

Personalized Services, If Needed 

As an AWS Premier Consulting Partner with more than 100 AWS accreditations and nearly 200 AWS engineers providing the highest level of expertise and support, Noventiq, of course, helps its customers with any AWS service in addition to OLA and MAP. Whatever the customer needs, AWS and Noventiq will find the most efficient and personalized solution. Knowing the customer’s needs, Noventiq’s specialists outline possible AWS services, then, working together with AWS specialists, conduct an optimization and licensing assessment, and provide the AWS Proof of Concept (POC) program. AWS POC is a dedicated POC environment in the customer’s AWS account that allows the customer to try out various AWS services before ordering anything. Customers can build out and test an infrastructure themselves, but of course, if required, Noventiq will work with AWS to build the requested infrastructure for testing. In addition, with the support of AWS, Noventiq will compile an accurate cost estimate so that customers can predict their expected costs, and then they can even settle their expenses through Noventiq if they order a cloud service. 

If you would like to know more about AWS cloud services or the services provided by Noventiq, don’t hesitate to contact us. Our AWS experts will be happy to arrange an appointment with you. Our company regularly organizes workshops and webinars, about which we provide up-to-date information on our LinkedIn page and in the Noventiq newsletter.