Views: 15
Summary – Under pressure to modernize infrastructure, reduce TCO and ensure agility and security while avoiding vendor lock-in and downtime, it’s imperative to adopt a rigorous approach. Favor detailed workflow mapping, least-privilege RBAC, FinOps-based total cost assessment, Infrastructure as Code security, phased migration (lift & shift, replatform, refactor), CI/CD governance, CloudWatch monitoring and hybridization with Swiss or European clouds. Solution: deploy this methodological framework with expert support to secure every phase and optimize continuity and performance.
Migration to AWS is a key step to modernize your infrastructure, reduce IT costs, and improve operational agility.
By carefully planning each phase—from workflow mapping to post-migration optimization—you can anticipate downtime and control your overall total cost of ownership (TCO). This article presents ten strategic, technical, and financial best practices to ensure a successful transition to the AWS cloud while guaranteeing security and scalability. We’ll also discuss European and Swiss solutions to limit vendor lock-in and strengthen data sovereignty, providing a comprehensive overview tailored to IT directors, CIOs, CTOs, CEOs, and IT project managers.
Strategic Preparation and Workflow Mapping
The success of an AWS migration depends on a thorough understanding of your application ecosystem. Precise workflow and dependency mapping prevents critical oversights.
Workflow Mapping and Dependency Identification
Before any operation, it is essential to inventory all applications, services, and data streams. This mapping allows you to visualize component interactions and identify friction points that could cause disruptions.
By identifying cross-service dependencies, you minimize the risk of service outages. Each service is evaluated based on its business criticality, data volume, and latency requirements to prioritize actions.
For example, a Swiss SME in the industrial sector conducted a comprehensive audit of its production applications. This analysis uncovered outdated interfaces between two key modules that would have caused over 48 hours of downtime without prior remediation.
Clear Definition of Roles and Access (RBAC)
A precise definition of roles and permissions (Role-Based Access Control, RBAC) ensures that each team or application has only the necessary rights. This limits the risk of misconfiguration and reduces the attack surface.
Implementing IAM (Identity and Access Management) groups structured by function centralizes access management and automates updates during organizational changes.
To strengthen security, associate each role with least-privilege policies and regularly audit assignments to detect any unnecessary permissions.
Realistic Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Assessment
Beyond migration costs, the TCO should include team training, ongoing maintenance, and partial system redesign. This long-term perspective helps avoid budgetary surprises.
You should account for variable costs (instances, storage, data transfers) and fixed costs (licenses, support, DevOps tooling). A basic FinOps model from the planning stage helps manage these expenses.
Finally, include project management fees, external consulting, and documentation to accurately estimate the total investment compared to an on-premises model.
Cloud Governance, Security, and Cost Control
Strong governance and a structured FinOps approach are essential to prevent cost overruns and ensure compliance. Incorporating AWS advanced security services strengthens your posture from the outset.
Security Integrated from the Start
In addition to RBAC, deploy AWS Security Hub to centralize vulnerability analysis and non-compliant configurations. AWS Shield protects your applications against DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, while GuardDuty continuously detects suspicious activity.
Adopting an Infrastructure as Code security strategy using AWS CloudFormation or Terraform ensures that every configuration is versioned, traceable, and reusable across dev, test, and production environments.
Development and security teams collaborate upfront to define standards and automated controls, thereby reducing the risk of human error and privilege escalation.
FinOps Optimization and Cost Tracking
FinOps involves establishing a culture of financial accountability in the cloud. It combines cost metrics, regular audits, and transparent reporting to align spending with business value.
Using AWS Cost Explorer and rigorously applied tags, you assign each resource to a project, cost center, or team, facilitating internal billing and budget allocation.
Scheduled alerts help detect consumption anomalies before they significantly impact the budget, enabling real-time control.
European and Swiss Alternatives to Limit Vendor Lock-In
To enhance data sovereignty, combine AWS with local providers such as Infomaniak or certified European sovereign clouds like OVHcloud and Scaleway. This hybrid approach reduces reliance on a single vendor.
Compatible APIs and Kubernetes abstractions facilitate cross-cloud deployments while maintaining workload flexibility and portability.
For example, a Swiss cantonal administration implemented a hybrid infrastructure by distributing its databases between AWS and a Swiss-certified cloud. This setup met Swiss regulatory requirements while leveraging AWS scalability.
Edana: strategic digital partner in Switzerland
We support companies and organizations in their digital transformation
Progressive Cloud Migration Approach
A gradual migration (lift & shift, refactor, replatform) reduces risks and ensures operational continuity. Each application follows the most suitable plan based on its criticality and architecture.
Lift & Shift for a Quick Start
The lift & shift method involves replicating your on-premises infrastructure to AWS without major redesign. This approach speeds up the initial migration and frees up local resources.
Although it does not fully leverage managed services, it serves as a first step to offload servers and validate network and IAM configurations.
A Swiss financial services company completed a lift & shift of its reporting servers in 48 hours. This move reduced local data center usage by 30% and laid the groundwork for further modernization.
Refactoring and Replatforming to Modernize Applications
After lift & shift, identify critical components to refactor in order to leverage managed services (RDS, Elastic Beanstalk, ECS). Replatforming aims to adjust the architecture without rewriting all the code.
This phase helps reduce technical debt and improve resilience through clustered databases, distributed file systems, and managed caches like ElastiCache.
Progressive refactoring is organized by functional batches, with performance and security validations before each production cutover.
Ongoing Training and Change Management
To ensure internal adoption, regularly train your teams on AWS services through hands-on workshops and AWS Certified Solutions Architect or DevOps Engineer certifications.
An internal communication plan, coupled with feedback sessions, fosters ownership of new processes and the spread of best practices.
Establishing a Cloud Center of Excellence facilitates experience sharing and the industrialization of validated architecture patterns.
Post-Migration Optimization, DevOps Automation, and FinOps
After migration, continuous improvement ensures optimal performance and strict financial control. DevOps integration accelerates deliveries and enhances reliability.
Performance Monitoring and Optimization
Use Amazon CloudWatch and AWS X-Ray to monitor latency, CPU usage, and error rate metrics. This allows you to detect bottlenecks in real time.
Automated reports identify underutilized instances, recommend rightsizing, and enable hibernation modes for non-critical environments.
A Swiss medical sector company implemented CloudWatch dashboards for its patient record APIs. Automated alerts reduced production performance incidents by 40%.
CI/CD Automation and DevOps Culture
Deploy CI/CD pipelines with AWS CodePipeline, CodeBuild, and CodeDeploy to automate testing, builds, and deployments. Each change is validated in a secure environment.
Integrating unit, integration, and end-to-end tests ensures each release meets your quality and security requirements.
GitOps practices, combining Git and Kubernetes operators, enable declarative and traceable management of your cloud deployments.
FinOps Governance to Control Spending
Monthly budget reviews align IT directors, finance teams, and business units on actual cloud consumption. Overrun alerts are addressed in a dedicated backlog.
Allocating dedicated budgets for each project, combined with granular tracking via AWS Budgets, promotes team accountability.
Thanks to these practices, budget overruns are minimized, and each expense is justified by measurable business value.
Benefits of a Well-Managed AWS Migration
A well-managed AWS migration relies on rigorous planning, secure governance, and a progressive approach tailored to each application. Initial mapping, RBAC, TCO assessment, and post-migration optimization work together to ensure continuity and scalability. By combining DevOps, FinOps, and managed services, you mitigate risks, control costs, and free up time for innovation. Hybrid solutions with Swiss or European clouds enhance data sovereignty and prevent vendor lock-in. Our Edana experts support every step of your project, from strategic analysis to continuous optimization, to transform your infrastructure into a genuine business performance engine.
