Moving workloads to the cloud requires more than motivation — you need a plan.
This article breaks down the eight key areas to assess before an AWS migration, based on our proven migration checklist used by clients across industries.
Migrating to Amazon Web Services (AWS) isn’t just about flashy new servers or data lift-and-shifts: it’s about breathing new life into your organization, helping it run securely, efficiently, and at scale.
Unfortunately, up to 75% of cloud migrations fail because organizations jump in without a solid understanding of what they’re migrating, how it will perform in the cloud, and what it will ultimately cost.
Think of it like moving houses.
You wouldn’t rent a truck, pack all your furniture up, and head across town without first knowing, beyond a doubt, that your new place has the space, plumbing, and wiring to support your lifestyle. Before moving, you’d have taken inventory: measuring, decluttering, and planning all the details out in advance.
Now, let’s apply this same logic to AWS cloud migration — without proper initial planning, you risk wasted spend, performance issues, and delays.
That’s why a checklist — a real, structured readiness tool — is essential.
You wouldn’t migrate without a destination and this checklist is your compass.
We’ve identified eight key areas every organization should assess before migrating workloads to AWS. These factors don’t just affect cloud performance — they dictate how your cloud migration strategy performs, how much it costs, and whether it delivers value.
It’s imperative to have a full picture of what’s running in your business environment: What applications do you have on the go? Are legacy systems still attached to business processes? What is interconnected?
A clear inventory is an important part of the AWS migration readiness checklist as, without one, migrations stall or fail due to disregarded interdependencies.
Unused, underused, or misaligned licenses carried by many organizations are a primary factor that unnecessarily drives up cloud spend.
Without a solid licensing optimization strategy, a workload migration is a cost problem in the making. This is especially critical for clients migrating Windows-based workloads or SQL Server environments.
What is the condition of your current infrastructure? Are you migrating to escape dying hardware or to improve the performance of existing systems?
The reason for this step in the AWS migration readiness checklist? It’s key to deciding whether to rehost, re-platform, or refactor in AWS.
To select the best fit of AWS services and storage tiers for your organization, it's essential to first understand your data footprint.
Larger data volumes can determine migration strategies, especially when downtime windows are tight.
Security can’t and shouldn’t be retrofitted and needs to be consolidated within your migration plan from the very start.
The optimal cloud environments will mirror or improve your current security standards — never weaken them.
Different migrations have different goals. What are your organization’s aims: To reduce costs? Improve scalability? Increase agility?
Migrations that don’t tie back to and aren’t led by business impact tend to fail.
Knowing your organization's current cost structure is not the same as predicting your future AWS costs.
Tools like AWS Pricing Calculator and Optimization and Licensing Assessments (OLA) can support this, but expert guidance makes the difference.
Successful migrations require more than tools — they need team alignment and leadership buy-in.
Ensuring leadership support and cross-functional readiness sets the foundation for a successful and sustainable migration.
Nearly one-third (32%) of organizational cloud infrastructure spend is wasted through poor management and bad investments.
Organizations that overlook the prep work risk facing:
This isn’t just limited to technical problems. These gaps in what should be included in an AWS migration readiness checklist can hinder business operations, impact compliance, and bleed resources before the migration even takes flight.
The checklist gives you the right questions. Our W.H.A.L.E. assessment gives you the answers.
No organization migrates to AWS on a whim or to maintain the status quo. They migrate to improve, always. Improvement, however, begins with insight, and that’s what our checklist helps provide.
If your organization is planning an AWS migration — or even just considering one — this is your chance to remove doubts and move forward with a clear, data-backed strategy.
Move forward knowing exactly what you’re getting into — and what you’ll get out of it.
Need help interpreting your checklist or planning next steps? Email us anytime at aws@epiuse.com — our team is ready to assist. Start with clarity. Migrate with confidence.