You know your organisation needs to modernise. But uncertainty is paralysing: What will it cost? What if something breaks? How long will systems be offline?
These questions keep cloud migration stuck in planning mode at hundreds of New Zealand and Australian organisations. While cost savings get the headlines (averaging 31% according to IDC), the most transformational benefits are the ones nobody discusses upfront.
Here are four genuinely surprising advantages that emerge from strategic AWS migration—benefits that often prove more valuable than the infrastructure savings themselves.
1. Your legacy infrastructure is already more expensive than AWS
The hidden costs you're paying right now
Most organisations frame cloud migration as "spending money to save money later." But TCO calculations reveal a different truth: you're already overpaying for inferior performance.
The real cost isn't just hardware, data centre space, and power. It's the invisible tax on your entire operation:
The talent tax: Your best engineers spend 40–60% of their time on infrastructure maintenance instead of building competitive advantages. IDC reports organisations moving to AWS run IT infrastructure management 62% more efficiently—equivalent to getting two full working days back per week from every infrastructure engineer.
The reliability tax: On-premises systems experience 3x more unplanned downtime. Nucleus Research found organisations moving to AWS achieve a 69% reduction in unplanned downtime. For financial services firms, each hour of downtime costs an average of $300,000 in lost revenue and regulatory exposure.
The opportunity tax: While you're maintaining legacy systems, competitors on AWS are launching features weekly instead of quarterly. Technical debt compounds. Market opportunities pass.
When you total these hidden costs, you're not evaluating "current cost vs. AWS cost." You're evaluating "current cost plus massive opportunity cost vs. AWS cost plus accelerated growth."
2. Migration Actually Improves Security and Compliance
Why are regulated industries migrating fastest?
Most organisations fear that cloud migration will add a compliance burden and increase security risk. The data shows the opposite.
Financial institutions and healthcare providers—the most regulated industries—are migrating to AWS faster than any other sector. Why? AWS provides pre-built compliance frameworks that would take years and millions to build internally.
For New Zealand's financial services sector, the RBNZ requires incident reporting within 72 hours, continuous monitoring, and detailed audit trails. Building this on-premises requires dedicated compliance staff and custom tools. On AWS, these capabilities are built in.
The RBNZ Guidance on Cyber Resilience Workbook maps AWS controls directly to regulatory requirements. Automated logging captures every system change. Compliance dashboards generate audit reports in minutes instead of weeks.
For technology companies, the benefit is investor confidence. Enterprise customers and VCs increasingly require SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certifications before signing contracts. AWS provides the compliance infrastructure that makes these certifications achievable without hiring a dedicated compliance team.
The surprise isn't just that AWS handles compliance well; it's that migrating often improves your compliance posture while reducing the workload required to maintain it.
3. You don't have to migrate everything to get everything
How partial migrations unlock full benefits
Here's the belief that stops migrations before they start: "We have 200 applications. We can't afford to migrate them all, so we can't justify starting."
This is the wrong mental model. The AWS Migration Acceleration Program is specifically designed to help organisations start strategically—migrating the right workloads first while leaving others on-premises.
The 70/20/10 reality: In typical assessments, 70% of workloads can "lift and shift" with minimal changes, 20% need refactoring, and 10% should be retired or replaced. You don't need to solve for all 200 applications at once.
Here's the surprise: partial migrations unlock full program benefits. Even if you only migrate 20% of your infrastructure, you still get:
- Full access to AWS MAP funding and support
- The complete assessment showing your entire landscape
- Training and enablement for your team
- A proven methodology for future phases
Starting small doesn't mean limited results. It means limited risk with unlimited upside.
4. The assessment that unlocks your migration is fully funded
Start with zero financial risk and complete clarity
The biggest barrier to cloud migration isn't the ongoing AWS costs—it's the uncertainty about what migration will actually require. Without proper assessment, you're making a six-figure decision based on rough estimates.
AWS fully funds the assessment phase that removes this uncertainty.
Through the Migration Acceleration Program, AWS covers the full cost of a professional migration assessment—typically a $10,000–$15,000 consulting engagement—at no cost.
What you receive:
- Complete migration readiness evaluation
- Detailed TCO model comparing current vs. AWS costs
- Security and compliance assessment (RBNZ-aligned for financial institutions)
- Application portfolio analysis
- Phased migration roadmap with timeline
- Executive business case with ROI projections
This comprehensive evaluation gives you everything you need to make an informed decision—whether you migrate immediately, plan for next year, or decide that cloud isn't right for certain workloads.
The real value isn't just the no-cost assessment—it's the clarity that lets you move forward with confidence instead of uncertainty. You gain complete visibility into costs, risks, timeline, and benefits before committing any budget.
The question isn't "If"—It's "How Soon"
While you're calculating models and evaluating options, your competitors are operating with 69% less downtime, deploying features 3x faster, and spending 31% less on infrastructure.
The pathway is proven. The risks are mapped. The funding is available. Every quarter you delay is a quarter your competitors gain ground.
The real risk isn't moving. It's waiting.
Whether you're in financial services, technology, or any industry preparing to scale, now is the time to act.
For a limited period, AWS funding is available for eligible New Zealand and Australian organisations to access a Migration Assessment valued at up to USD $15,000—delivered in 4–6 weeks by ISW, an AWS Advanced Partner trusted by enterprises to modernise securely and accelerate innovation.
Explore Sector-Specific Offers
🔹 NZ Financial Sector Offer →
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Shared by ISW’s Cloud Transformation Team
Phanh Phengsavath
Head of Cloud Strategy & Enterprise Systems
Email: pphengsavath@isw.net.au