Every Year You Wait,
On-Premises Gets More Expensive.
Aging infrastructure doesn't hold steady. It compounds. Licensing renews, hardware ages, and your team spends more time keeping the past alive than building the future. Migration changes that equation permanently.
The Signs Your On-Premises Environment Has Outrun Its Usefulness
Most organizations know migration is coming. The ones who wait the longest pay the most: in licensing, in talent attrition, and in opportunity cost.
Situation One"Licensing costs increase every renewal cycle"
Vendor price increases are predictable and compounding. Every renewal starts from a higher number than the last one. There is no scenario where staying on-premises gets cheaper.
Situation Two"The capital outlay for a hardware refresh is too high"
Every 3–5 years the hardware conversation comes back. Capital expenditure that could fund product development goes into infrastructure that produces no new capability.
Situation Three"We can't find people who understand our legacy systems anymore"
Engineers who want to work with modern infrastructure leave. The ones who stay are increasingly rare and expensive. The institutional knowledge required to maintain aging systems walks out the door with every departure.
Situation Four"Disaster recovery and backup are inadequate"
On-premises DR is expensive, slow, and rarely tested. A single failure event can cost more than a full migration would have.
Situation Five"We can only deploy new releases every six months"
When your infrastructure can't support faster release cycles, the business waits on engineering, and engineering waits on hardware. Competitors who've moved are shipping faster every quarter.
Situation Six"Security and compliance posture is difficult to maintain"
On-premises patching, access control, and compliance evidence collection are manual and error-prone. Cloud platforms provide these natively.
The Math Almost Always Favors Migration
The question isn't whether migration saves money. It almost always does. The question is how much it saves, on what timeline, and which path is right for your specific environment. That's exactly what COBRA™ answers.
What Migration Actually Delivers
Here is what changes once the migration is actually done, measured rather than promised.
Infrastructure costs decrease 30%
Eliminating hardware refresh cycles, reducing licensing overhead, and right-sizing workloads in the cloud consistently produces meaningful cost reduction within the first year.
New environments provision in minutes, not weeks
Development and staging environments that required procurement and provisioning cycles are available on demand. Time-to-experiment drops from weeks to minutes.
Security and compliance become manageable
Cloud-native security tooling, automated patching, and audit logging transform compliance from a quarterly fire drill into a continuous, automated process.
Scaling becomes a configuration, not a project
Traffic spikes that required capacity planning and hardware procurement become auto-scaling events. Your infrastructure responds to demand rather than constraining it.
cost reduction
"CleanSlate's COBRA assessment found cost reduction opportunities we hadn't identified internally. The migration paid for itself within eight months."
How Average Partners Approach Migration
Most migration engagements fail not because the technology is hard, but because the partner didn't do the diagnostic work first. Here are the specific signals that tell you a partner is cutting corners.
Pricing by VM count
Any partner who quotes "$200 per VM" is treating your migration as a commodity. VM count ignores actual complexity: dependencies, licensing obligations, application architecture, and the operational readiness of your team after the move.
Using AWS funding programs without a real plan
Some partners run OLA and MAP assessments primarily to collect AWS funding, with no serious intention of delivering a quality migration. The diagnostic is real. Ask what happens after the funding is applied.
Lift-and-shift with no modernization path
Migration that only rehouses workloads leaves all the architectural problems intact. If your partner can't answer the question "what happens after the migration?" they've planned to stop at the wrong place.
No reference for a complex real-world environment
Migration through a clear environment is not the same as migration through a legacy application landscape with undocumented dependencies and aging infrastructure. Ask for references that match your situation.
How to Evaluate Your Migration Options
Before you engage anyone, including CleanSlate, understand the real differences between approaches. The questions below will help you evaluate any partner.
| Approach | Do It Yourself | Other Partners |  |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starts with a diagnostic | ✕ Rarely. Most teams jump straight to scoping based on assumptions. | ~ Sometimes, but often skipped to accelerate the sale. | ✓ Always. COBRA™ runs before any scope is written or any commitment is made. |
| AWS funding programs applied | ✕ Not accessible without Premier partner status. | ~ Varies by partner tier. Many partners are not Premier. | ✓ Yes. AWS Premier Tier Partner with full MAP and OLA program access. |
| Handles all 7 migration types | ✕ Typically rehost only. Refactoring and replatforming require expertise most teams don't have internally. | ~ Varies significantly. Ask specifically about refactor and replatform capability. | ✓ Yes. Full capability across all 7 R's, rehost, replatform, refactor, retire, retain, repurchase, and relocate. |
| Post-migration modernization | ✕ Often stalls without dedicated expertise. | ✕ Many migration partners stop at the lift-and-shift. Few have genuine modernization capability. | ✓ Yes. CleanSlate migrates and modernizes. The two engagements are designed to connect. |
| IBM workloads supported | Depends entirely on internal expertise. | ~ Varies by firm. | ✓ Yes. IBM Platinum Business Partnership alongside AWS Premier. |
| Typical timeline | Longer than most internal teams expect, constrained by available bandwidth. | Extended by large-team coordination and extensive scoping phases. | ✓ Scoped and de-risked through COBRA™. The assessment determines the realistic timeline. |
| Best fit when... | You have deep AWS expertise, available bandwidth, and a clear environment. | You need enterprise-scale delivery across multiple simultaneous workstreams. | ✓ You need expert-led delivery, funded where possible, without the overhead of a large SI. |
We Migrate What's There, Not What We Assumed Was There
Most migration failures happen because the planning was based on documentation that didn't reflect reality. COBRA™ finds what's actually running before we move anything.
Discovery before design
COBRA™ maps every workload, dependency, and licensing obligation before we touch anything. No surprises mid-migration.
Wave-based execution
We migrate in sequenced waves: low-risk workloads first, complex ones after we've established confidence in the process and the landing zone.
Partner funding applied
As an AWS Premier Tier Partner, we access funding programs that offset significant migration costs. Most clients are surprised by how much is available.
Focused Migration Paths
Is Your Migration Centered on One System?
Some migrations turn on a single source of cost or risk. These pages go deeper on the specific paths we are asked about most, each starting with the same diagnostic.
Database Migration
Oracle, IBM DB2, and SQL Server licensing often outpaces actual usage. We model the licensing before we touch the data.
Explore database migrationVMware Migration
VMware licensing keeps climbing for capabilities most teams never use. We start with a licensing analysis, not a forklift.
Explore VMware migrationLegacy Application Migration
The applications that keep the business running can also hold it back. We assess the risk before anyone commits to moving.
Explore legacy application migrationThe Migration Process, Explained by the People Who Run It
Five short videos with Artie Sluka, who leads our AWS migration practice. Watch one or all five, in any order. Prefer the whole funded path on a single page? See the Migration Journey Map.
From Our Resources
Not Sure Migration Is the Right First Move?
These articles are for buyers earlier in the process, still naming the problem or comparing their options before committing to a conversation.
High Maintenance Costs, A Symptom of the Legacy Trap
Rising IT costs often signal something deeper than budget pressure. Learn how legacy architecture quietly inverts your cost model over time.
Read articleIs Your Data Center Draining Your Budget?
Data centers may seem predictable, but hidden costs compound. Most organizations are only seeing part of the financial picture.
Read articleWhy Is a 7R Analysis Critical to Your Migration Success?
Retire, retain, rehost, replatform, refactor, the 7R model in plain language, with a concrete example for each approach.
Read articleThis Is Too Important to Get Wrong. That's Why We Start With a Diagnostic.
We hear it often: "My neck is on the line with this." That's exactly why COBRA™ exists. Before any scope is written, before any vendor is engaged, before any commitment is made. You have the actual numbers. What you're running, what it costs, what migration would produce, and a roadmap that's yours to keep regardless of what you decide.