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REF-03Reference scenarioFinance & Professional Services

Governed AWS migration for a professional-services firm

A reference migration path from aging servers to a secure, recoverable AWS foundation.

Published

This is a planning example written by EngineSpire to show how we would approach the problem. It is not a completed client project, and its outcomes are design targets rather than measured results.

The challenge

A service firm depends on several line-of-business systems hosted on hardware approaching end of support. Remote access, backups and change control have developed separately, increasing operational risk.

The solution pattern

The proposed program begins with dependency discovery and a governed AWS landing zone. Identity, logging, budgets, network security and backup are established before migration waves. Each application has acceptance criteria, a rollback point and tested recovery procedures.

How the work would be phased

  1. PHASE 01

    Discover dependencies

    Inventory servers, applications, integrations, licences, data volumes and business owners, and map which systems depend on each other.

  2. PHASE 02

    Build the landing zone

    Set up separate accounts, federated identity with MFA, central logging, guardrails, budgets and the network design before any workload moves.

  3. PHASE 03

    Plan migration waves

    Group applications by dependency and risk, and decide for each whether to rehost, replatform, replace or retire it.

  4. PHASE 04

    Migrate wave by wave

    Move each wave with acceptance criteria, a rollback point and a communication plan for the people who use the systems.

  5. PHASE 05

    Operate and decommission

    Test restores, review costs, keep patching on schedule and wipe or destroy the old hardware securely.

Trade-offs and considerations

  • Some line-of-business software licences restrict cloud hosting or require dedicated instances. Check licence terms before planning a wave.
  • Latency from Philippine offices to the chosen AWS Region affects interactive applications. Test from where people actually work.
  • Estimates should include data transfer, backup storage, logging and support, not only compute.
  • Retired servers still contain client data. Plan secure wiping or destruction and keep a record of it.