Launch & Migrate
A starter migration offering that helps startups and small businesses move into AWS with a clear plan, guardrails, and confidence — instead of a risky “lift and hope” approach.
From on-prem to AWS, safely
The focus of this project is not just “getting to the cloud,” but arriving with the essentials in place: networking, security, observability, and a migration plan that business leaders actually understand.
Role
Cloud Architect · Migration Lead
Tech Stack
AWS (VPC, IAM, EC2/RDS), Landing Zone patterns, VPN/Direct Connect, CI/CD, Observability
Highlights
Structured migration playbook · Security & cost guardrails · Business-friendly communication
Overview
Many teams know they need to be in the cloud, but they don't have a safe path to get there. In this project, I designed a repeatable migration offering — Launch & Migrate — that helps organizations move workloads to AWS with clear phases, realistic timelines, and a strong focus on security and cost.
Instead of a purely technical conversation, the engagement is framed around risk, visibility, and business continuity, so that executives, operations, and engineers stay aligned from day one.
Migration approach
The Launch & Migrate playbook is broken into focused stages:
- Discovery & inventory – catalog current workloads, dependencies, data flows, and non-negotiable constraints (compliance, SLAs, maintenance windows).
- Landing zone design – define AWS accounts, networking (VPC, subnets, connectivity), identity (IAM, SSO), and baseline security controls so migrations don't start on a shaky foundation.
- Migration waves – group applications into waves (pilot, low-risk, core systems), choose the strategy per workload (rehost, replatform, refactor), and plan cutover steps.
- Execution & verification – run the migrations, validate performance and data integrity, and use observability dashboards to confirm the new environment is healthy.
- Handover & optimization – document the environment, train the operational team, and review early cost & performance data to identify quick wins.
Security and cost guardrails
A key outcome of this project is ensuring that the new cloud footprint is not only functional, but governable. As part of the engagement I emphasized:
- Least-privilege IAM for both human and machine identities, aligned with organizational roles.
- Network segmentation (public, private, and restricted subnets) to reduce blast radius and control inbound exposure.
- Centralized logging & monitoring so that security and operations teams can see events across accounts from a single pane of glass.
- Cost visibility via budgets, tags, and dashboarding, making it clear which teams and workloads drive spend.
Impact
By the end of the engagement, the client had a production-ready AWS environment, a tested path for moving additional workloads, and a shared understanding of how cloud decisions affect cost, risk, and agility.
The same framework can be reused for future migrations, or adapted for hybrid setups where some systems remain on-prem while new services are born in the cloud.