AWS
AWS Migration Consulting Services: Assessment, Roadmap and Partner Selection
A buyer’s guide to AWS assessment and partner selection
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An AWS migration proposal should not begin with a list of services and a delivery date. It should begin with evidence: what is in scope, how applications depend on one another, which workload path fits each system, what the target environment must contain, and how cutover risk will be controlled.
AWS migration consulting services help enterprise teams produce that evidence before funding and delivery commitments are approved. A consultant should turn incomplete infrastructure records, business priorities, security constraints and operating requirements into an assessment, a migration roadmap and a partner evaluation basis that leaders can defend.
It complements the broader AWS cloud migration services pillar by focusing on the approval evidence required before delivery.
Direct buyer answers
What does an AWS migration consultant assess? The consultant assesses business objectives, application and infrastructure inventory, utilization, dependencies, data, licensing, security, recovery needs, operating ownership and the suitability of each workload for AWS.
How long does an AWS migration assessment take? There is no credible fixed duration without knowing the number of applications, data quality, dependency complexity, stakeholder availability, compliance obligations and depth of business-case analysis. The assessment plan should state these scope factors and the evidence required to complete each one.
What should an AWS migration roadmap contain? It should contain workload priorities, 7 Rs decisions, landing-zone requirements, migration waves, staffing, security gates, cost assumptions, validation tests, cutover and rollback criteria, and post-migration ownership.
Begin with the business problem and workload scope
The first consulting task is to define the decision the organization is trying to make. A data center exit, hardware renewal, acquisition, licensing concern, resilience gap or new product initiative creates a different migration case. If the objective is unclear, the team may produce a technically sound plan that does not address the reason leadership funded the work.
Scope should cover more than servers. It may include applications, databases, storage, interfaces, identity providers, certificates, network paths, scheduled jobs, file transfers, monitoring, recovery processes and third-party services. The scope record should also identify what is excluded, who approved the boundary and which assumptions still require confirmation.
What AWS migration consulting services should assess
A consultant should establish a current-state baseline before recommending a target architecture. The record should cover configuration, utilization, operating systems, storage, licensing, application owners, criticality, integrations, data sensitivity and recovery requirements.
Dependency evidence is especially important. A server list may appear complete while omitting authentication, batch processing, reporting feeds or external APIs. Those omissions surface during testing or cutover, when they are hardest to correct. Discovery tools can support the work, but application owners and operations teams must validate what automated discovery finds.
AWS now positions AWS Transform assessments as the current assessment environment for evaluating cost, feasibility and business value. It accepts inventory from sources such as its discovery tool, RVTools, CMDB exports, partner tools and Migration Evaluator. Migration Evaluator remains a supported source for business-case and inventory data. AWS Migration Hub still appears in established environments, but AWS states that it has not been open to new customers since November 7, 2025 and recommends AWS Transform for similar capabilities. A proposal should therefore name the current service and explain any legacy terminology.
Migration-assessment deliverables
What Our Cloud Migration Plan Delivers
Every migration is backed by clear scope, validated dependencies, documented decisions, cost assumptions, and defined delivery controls.
Scope & Inventory
Applications, infrastructure, data, owners, dependencies and exclusions are clearly identified.
Owners confirm boundaries and identify gaps.
Dependency Map
Identity, network, data, batch processes and external connections are mapped across application groups.
Application groups and dependencies are validated.
7 Rs Decisions
Each workload receives a recommended migration path with the rationale, assumptions and associated risks.
Exceptions and non-standard decisions are documented.
Landing-Zone Plan
Accounts, access, networking, logging, encryption and governance requirements are defined before workloads move.
Foundation and governance decisions are approved.
Cost Case
Current costs, target assumptions, migration scenarios and excluded costs are documented for transparent planning.
All cost inputs and assumptions are traceable.
Wave Plan
Workloads are grouped into migration waves based on dependencies, business priority, resources and readiness.
Entry and exit criteria are clearly defined.
Cutover & Rollback
Testing, outage windows, decision triggers, authority and data handling are defined before production cutover.
Acceptance criteria and rollback conditions are agreed.
Operating Model
Service ownership, support, recovery, cost management and performance measures are established for post-migration operations.
Handoff responsibilities and success measures are accepted.
Ready to move from assessment to execution?
Build a migration plan with clear decisions, measurable outcomes and controlled delivery.
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A recommended migration-planning framework
Recommended working name pending internal approval: the Migration Evidence Chain. This is a proposed way to organize Info Services planning content, not a claim that an existing proprietary method has been approved.
The framework connects seven decisions: inventory, dependencies, workload paths, landing zone, migration waves, cutover and rollback, and operating ownership. Each decision produces evidence needed by the next.
Workload paths should use the AWS 7 Rs: retire, retain, rehost, relocate, repurchase, replatform, and refactor or re-architect. The selected path should state the business rationale, architectural impact, testing burden, cost assumption and owner. One path should not be applied to an entire portfolio by default.
AWS services and target architecture decisions
The roadmap must define the AWS foundation before production waves begin. A landing zone provides the baseline for account structure, identity and access, governance, data protection, network design and logging. AWS Control Tower can automate a service-based landing zone and uses AWS Organizations and related services to govern a multi-account environment.
Service selection follows workload evidence. AWS Transform may support assessment and planning. AWS Application Migration Service may be considered for server rehosting, and AWS Database Migration Service may support suitable database migration and replication scenarios. The consulting output should explain why each service fits the workload instead of inserting a generic AWS product list.
The Info Services AWS technology capabilities page provides a broader view of its current AWS practice.
What the AWS migration roadmap should contain
From Assessment to Cloud Operations
A structured migration approach with defined outputs and decision gates at every stage.
| Stage | Output | Decision Gate |
|---|---|---|
|
01
Define the Decision
|
Objectives, scope and measures | Sponsor approves the boundary |
|
02
Assess the Estate
|
Validated inventory and dependencies | Owners confirm findings |
|
03
Select Paths
|
7 Rs decision and target mapping | Rationale is accepted |
|
04
Prepare the Foundation
|
Landing-zone design and controls | Security and operations approve |
|
05
Plan Waves
|
Sequence, staffing and runbooks | Entry criteria are satisfied |
|
06
Validate & Cut Over
|
Tests, approvals and rollback | Business acceptance is recorded |
|
07
Operate & Measure
|
Ownership, cost and reliability baseline | Handoff is accepted |
Migration waves should group workloads by dependency and business readiness. A useful early wave has understood interfaces, available owners and representative technical patterns, but it does not expose the organization's most critical process to unnecessary risk. Later waves can apply the lessons, tooling and runbooks established earlier.
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Security, governance, cost and downtime controls
Security decisions belong in the assessment and landing-zone plan. The consultant should document access, encryption, logging, data residency, vulnerability handling, backup and the approval path for privileged migration actions.
Cost analysis should use measured utilization and explicit assumptions. The business case should distinguish AWS consumption, licensing, network and data-transfer charges, temporary parallel environments, migration labor, application remediation and post-migration review.
Downtime controls should identify the replication approach, outage tolerance, business approver, validation tests and rollback threshold. Zero downtime should not be promised without workload-specific evidence.
Validation and rollback before source retirement
Technical completion is not business acceptance. Validation should cover application functions, integrations, data reconciliation, performance, identity, logging, backup and recovery. Business owners should approve the results before traffic is permanently shifted or the source environment is retired.
A rollback plan should specify the triggering conditions, decision owner, data-handling method, traffic-return steps, source-retention period and evidence needed for another cutover attempt. These decisions belong in the roadmap before the migration window, not in an incident call after a failed test.
How long an AWS migration assessment takes
Duration depends on scope and evidence quality. The main factors are application count, infrastructure size, data completeness, dependency complexity, number of business owners, licensing analysis, regulatory review, target-architecture depth and whether the engagement includes a detailed cost model or pilot plan.
A responsible consultant should break the assessment into work products with entry and exit criteria. This makes progress visible without inventing a universal promise.
How to select an AWS migration partner
A strong AWS migration partner should be evaluated on the evidence it will produce, the people who will make architecture decisions and the controls that protect the cutover. Certifications and partner designations matter, but they do not replace a review of proposed deliverables, responsibilities, assumptions and proof.
What to Look for in a Migration Partner
Evaluate migration proposals based on evidence, decision quality, delivery controls and operational readiness—not just projected savings.
| Criterion | What to Request | Warning Sign |
|---|---|---|
|
Assessment Method
|
Data sources, validation, assumptions and exclusions | Service list without an evidence plan |
|
Architecture Decisions
|
Workload paths, landing zone and security rationale | Generic reference design |
|
Cost Model
|
Measured inputs, licensing, transfer and parallel costs | Savings claim without a baseline |
|
Delivery Controls
|
Waves, runbooks, tests, rollback and owners | Date set before dependencies are known |
|
Relevant Proof
|
Source, target and published outcome | Claims that cannot be checked |
|
Operating Handoff
|
Support, recovery, cost measures and knowledge transfer | Ownership after cutover is unclear |
The current Info Services AWS migration page reports 500+ successful AWS migrations and 250+ AWS-certified experts, and displays AWS Managed Service Provider, Migration and Modernization Services, and Advanced Tier Services designations. These statements should remain subject to internal marketing approval before publication even though they are live on the page.
Buyer question checklist before approving a proposal
- What inventory sources will be used, and who validates missing or conflicting data?
- How will application, data, identity and network dependencies be confirmed?
- Which workload decisions are included, and will every application receive a documented 7 Rs rationale?
- What landing-zone decisions must be approved before the first production wave?
- Which costs are included or excluded from the business case?
- How are migration waves formed, and what are their entry and exit criteria?
- Which security and compliance gates can stop a cutover?
- What tests define business acceptance, and who signs the result?
- What triggers rollback, and how will data changes be handled?
- Who owns reliability, recovery, support and cost after migration?
Evidence from published Info Services engagements
In a published vertical-farming IoT engagement, the source environment was a three-tier VMware architecture. The target AWS environment included Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon RDS, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Athena, Amazon QuickSight, Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Redshift and Amazon S3, with AWS security and monitoring services. The page reports a more robust platform, improved data management and lower storage costs, but it does not publish a migration timeline or cutover-downtime figure.
A second published engagement describes an industrial IoT sensor-analytics platform redesigned around microservices, Postgres, React, Azure DevOps and AWS services. The reported outcome was a 30% reduction in AWS spend, along with a resilient data and analytics platform, field insights and automated build and deployment processes. The source page does not publish the full prior hosting architecture, migration duration or cutover-downtime result, so those details should remain unavailable rather than inferred.
These cases show why provider proof should state the source environment, target environment and published outcome. When a case study omits duration or downtime, the proposal should not create those numbers.
Conclusion: approve the evidence before the proposal
AWS migration consulting services should give leadership a defensible basis for funding, sequencing and governing the move. The assessment establishes scope and dependencies. The roadmap connects workload paths, the landing zone, waves, cost, security, validation and rollback. Partner selection tests whether the provider can produce and act on that evidence.
Info Services provides assessment, migration planning, workload delivery and ongoing AWS support. Request an AWS migration assessment to review your portfolio, decision gaps and roadmap requirements before approving a delivery proposal.
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