Whether you're migrating legacy systems to the AWS cloud or need a team to support modernization, integration, or optimization, Metal Toad is here to help. Our team is highly experienced in migrating workloads from VMware environments to AWS, ensuring minimal downtime and maximum performance.
With a hybrid team based in the U.S. and Brazil, we deliver cost-effective solutions without compromising on quality or speed.
Eliminate rising VMware licensing fees, while maintaining performance and enhancing workflows with AWS-native services and automation.
CDN Migration Services
Save money on your CDN by moving your CDN workloads from Akamai, CloudFlare, or Fastly to AWS CloudFront.
GenAI Migration Services
Save money and improve GenAI results by migrating your OpenAI or Gemini workloads to AWS Bedrock.
How do AWS Cloud Migrations Work?
Migrating to the AWS cloud involves moving data, applications, and workloads from on-premises infrastructure, private hosting, or other cloud environments to Amazon Web Services. This process unlocks scalability, cost savings, and improved performance, but it requires careful planning and execution to ensure success.
Assessment and Planning
Choosing a Migration Strategy
Tooling and Execution
Testing and Validation
Optimization and Modernization
1. Assessment and Planning
A view of the AWS Migration Hub from the AWS Console
Every successful migration begins with a deep understanding of the current environment. AWS provides tools like the AWS Migration Evaluator and AWS Application Discovery Service to assess infrastructure, usage patterns, and dependencies. This step helps organizations create a data-driven migration plan aligned with business goals.
2. Choosing a Migration Strategy
Known as the “6 R’s” of migration, AWS supports six common strategies:
Rehost (Lift and Shift) – Move applications as-is using tools like AWS Application Migration Service (MGN).
Replatform – Make minor changes during migration (e.g., moving to Amazon RDS from on-prem databases).
Repurchase – Replace legacy software with SaaS alternatives.
Refactor – Redesign applications to be cloud-native.
Retire – Decommission obsolete workloads.
Retain – Keep some workloads on-prem temporarily.
3. Tooling and Execution
AWS offers robust tools for various stages of migration:
After workloads are migrated, AWS recommends running validation tests to ensure functionality, performance, and security meet expectations. Load balancing, failover testing, and automated backups are configured during this phase.
5. Optimization and Modernization
Once live, workloads can be optimized for cost, performance, and scalability. This may include adopting serverless services, containerization (using ECS or EKS), or integrating with AWS-native tools like CloudWatch, Lambda, or S3. This is where the majority of cost savings are seen, because lift and shift approaches will often leave significant over-provisioning, which doesn't take advantage of the elastic nature of AWS Cloud.
A Deep Dive on AWS Cloud Migration Tools & Programs
In order to facilitate customer's entry into their ecosystem, AWS has created a wide array of Cloud migration tools, which are available both inside and outside of the AWS Console. As of 2025 this list of tools includes these 16 services:
A view of AWS Database Migration Service (BMS) from the AWS Console
AWS Migration Hub provides a centralized location to track the progress of application migrations across multiple AWS and partner tools. Best used for gaining visibility and control when managing large-scale migrations with multiple moving parts.
AWS Application Discovery Service
This service helps you plan your migration by automatically collecting information about on-premises servers, applications, and dependencies. Ideal for organizations starting their migration journey who need to understand their current infrastructure.
MGN simplifies lift-and-shift migrations by replicating source servers in real time and converting them to run natively on AWS. Best used for quickly moving production workloads with minimal downtime and without making code changes.
DMS enables fast, secure database migration to AWS with minimal downtime. Use it when migrating databases like Oracle, SQL Server, or MySQL to AWS-managed services such as Amazon RDS or Aurora.
DataSync automates and accelerates data transfer between on-premises storage and AWS services like S3, EFS, or FSx. Best used for recurring or large-scale data transfers with built-in encryption and validation.
OLA helps assess existing licenses and compute usage to recommend cost-optimized AWS deployment options. Ideal before migration to reduce licensing costs and right-size infrastructure.
Snowball is a physical data transport solution that moves large volumes of data securely to AWS. Best used when transferring petabytes of data over the network would take too long or isn't feasible.
Provides fully managed support for file transfer protocols like SFTP, FTPS, FTP, and AS2. Ideal for organizations needing to migrate traditional file transfer workflows to the cloud securely.
Allows you to run VMware workloads on AWS without re-architecting applications. Use it for hybrid cloud scenarios or when seeking a fast, low-risk path to cloud adoption.
Amazon Elastic VMware Service (Amazon EVS) Preview
EVS enables seamless VMware workload migration to a fully managed AWS service. Best used by VMware-heavy organizations wanting to modernize operations while retaining familiar tools.
This service enables replatforming or refactoring of mainframe workloads to run on AWS. Ideal for enterprises looking to modernize COBOL or other legacy mainframe applications.
Provides optimized infrastructure and licensing support for running Windows workloads on AWS. Use it when migrating Active Directory, SQL Server, or other Microsoft-based applications to a secure and scalable environment.
AWS supports the full range of SAP workloads, from development systems to mission-critical production environments. Best used when running or planning to migrate ERP systems like SAP S/4HANA to the cloud.
This program supports SAP's RISE offering by providing validated infrastructure and managed services on AWS. Use it when adopting RISE with SAP as part of a business transformation strategy.
MAP is a structured, incentive-based program that offers funding, tools, and resources to accelerate cloud migration. Ideal for large enterprises needing help justifying, funding, and executing a broad cloud migration strategy.
Migration Evaluator helps build a data-backed business case for cloud migration by analyzing usage patterns and costs. Best used in the planning phase to quantify the ROI of moving to AWS.
EBA is a hands-on workshop methodology that rapidly identifies and removes barriers to cloud adoption. Best used to align stakeholders and accelerate stalled or complex transformation projects.
We build the most valuable, safest AWS Cloud solutions for our customers and have a significant amount of experience across all the major public Cloud providers.
Schedule a Free Consultation
Speak with our team to understand how Metal Toad can help you drive innovation, growth and success.
If you are new to AWS, the AWS Shared Responsibility Model (seen below) means that you, the customer, are not only responsible for selecting the right product and configuring it, but you are responsible for:
Customer data
Platform, applications, identity, and access management
“In addition to being a highly competent technical vendor they never failed to call out issues proactively and ensure that all our needs - both at a business and technical level - were being met. I consider Metal Toad a true technology partner.”
“One of the best relationships we have ever had with a vendor.”
“The cloud computing environment that Metal Toad built provided significant savings on our traditional in-house hosted environment while delivering a more reliable site, and providing a better customer experience.”
“Metal toad's ability to solve problems with a humble approach has earned them a lot of respect with everyone who's had a chance to work with them throughout our organization. I look forward to collaborating on more projects in the future.”
“ They have been a great partner and easy to work with. We can't say enough positive things about Metal Toad - technically competent, professional, and probably most important, they understand customer service”
Despite its global fame, the GRAMMY Awards found itself struggling to capture the interest and engagement of younger audiences. The traditional viewing experience was no longer resonating with the preferences and expectations of the newer generation. This generational disconnect posed a threat to the continued relevance and popularity of the GRAMMY brand
TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION
In response to the generational gap challenge, Metal Toad collaborated closely with the onsite GRAMMY team to implement a groundbreaking solution - integrating five video streams, all delivered seamlessly via AWS directly to viewers' browsers. This innovative approach aimed to provide a more dynamic and personalized online viewing experience for the audience.
IMPACT
The implementation of Metal Toad's technology solution had a transformative impact on the GRAMMY viewing experience. Both during the live event and across the globe, the GRAMMY Awards became the talk of the town
Search results were stale, poorly ranked, and simply not delivering the content that users demanded.
TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION
Metal Toad proposed a custom search solution that was scalable, reliable, and free from licensing costs or vendor lock-in.
IMPACT
A 40% increase in relevant hit rates, drastically reduced search page load times, and overall improved visitor satisfaction were reported within the first week of launch.
The issue was outdated tech: Sony Rewards was hosted on old physical IBM servers. There was no way to scale up capacity when needed, and the clunky legacy infrastructure led to unreliability.
TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION
Metal Toad’s first order of business was to get the site’s capacity up to snuff with an elastic cloud solution using Amazon Web Services (AWS). Now their server capacity can stretch to meet traffic demands.
IMPACT
In past years, site outages during Black Friday weekend caused Sony Rewards to lose customers. Last year, we doubled their server capacity—and kept the site humming (and generating revenue) all weekend.
GeniusVets has been tracking and recording inbound calls for their clients for years, and providing clients with the ability to listen back and flag problem calls for training purposes. The only problem? There are simply too many calls to be realistically handled by human reviewers.
TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION
GeniusVets partnered with Metal Toad to develop an AI call review system. Utilizing AWS tools, including Amazon Transcribe Speech-To-Text and SageMaker, Metal Toad created a system that identifies the small fraction of calls that need to be reviewed by a human. This will allow human reviewers to focus on the “needles”, not the “haystack,” and thus better train their teams.
IMPACT
With calls now being evaluated by the AI in advance, GeniusVets clients can easily find the handful of calls that they need to review most of all. This makes their managers more effective, streamlines training, and ultimately increases practice growth and profitability by helping turn more of these new callers into life-long clients.
When approaching Metal Toad for a potential partnership, they made it clear that their current website was falling short.
TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION
Metal Toad improved usability, access to interactive modules, and site-wide responsiveness while optimizing Orchestra content for online search.
IMPACT
Visitor experience enjoyed vastly improved overall site usability, including ordering tickets, access to events calendar, quick-and-easy donations, and social sharing.
WE DELIVER THE BEST
Case Studies
We are proud to be trusted by some of the most well-known brands in the world. Learn more about how we've set our clients to success.
Discover the five critical signs that indicate your business needs AWS cloud migration consulting to optimize performance, reduce costs, and enhance...
.png?width=75&height=75&name=images%20(1).png)
.svg.png){kind=logo}
