Accelerate Cloud Transformation with a Smart Path to AWS Migration

Cloud migration opens the door to greater agility, cost savings and long-term innovation. For CIOs and infrastructure leaders, realizing those benefits requires more than just tools — it demands a clear, proven framework backed by experience. Without the right approach, migrations can lose momentum, exceed budgets or create operational friction. Rigid frameworks, slow execution and lack of expert guidance often stand in the way. That’s why it’s essential to move with purpose, minimizing risk while building a strong foundation for success on public clouds like Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Why fast, frictionless migration matters

The longer it takes to exit legacy infrastructure, the longer your business remains burdened by rising operating costs, security risk and reduced agility. But a high-velocity migration doesn’t mean cutting corners — it means using best practices and automation to reduce risks while accelerating time-to-value.

We often see organizations that are moving 100 or more virtual machines (VMs) to AWS struggle with fragmented planning, inconsistent execution or instability after the move. That’s where having a fully guided process, from assessment to Day 2 operations, changes the equation.

A guided, four-phase approach to AWS success

A structured, prescriptive migration model helps de-risk your journey while setting up a scalable foundation for innovation. Here’s what we recommend for a well-executed migration.

Phase 1: Assess — clarify your strategy

At this stage, it's critical to get a clear view of your current total cost of ownership, understand how existing licenses can be streamlined, and identify any AWS funding or incentives that could offset migration costs. This early planning helps surface risks, align stakeholders and avoid costly surprises down the line.

Phase 2: Mobilize — lay the groundwork for a successful migration

This is the stage to move from strategy to action. We recommend organizations focus on deep discovery and detailed migration planning to ensure alignment across teams. It’s also the right time to establish a strong cloud foundation, such as a well-architected landing zone, to enable governance, security and scalability throughout the migration journey.

Phase 3: Migrate and modernize — move with purpose

During this phase, the focus shifts to execution. We recommend organizations prioritize automation to accelerate rehosting while minimizing disruption. It’s also an ideal time to assess where modernization, such as upgrading operating systems or replatforming your applications to expand beyond a straight migration, can improve performance and reduce technical debt. A thoughtful approach to the execution of your migration can simplify the process and set the stage for long-term value.

Phase 4: Operate — stabilize and scale with confidence

Once workloads are in the cloud, the focus shifts to operational maturity. This entails implementing cost management practices, maintaining governance and aligning with frameworks like AWS Well-Architected to ensure ongoing security, performance and resilience. Investing early in the optimization of all aspects of your cloud operations — including cost controls, governance, monitoring and performance management — empowers your teams to scale efficiently and capture the full value of your cloud environment.

A practical approach with long-term impact

Your success isn’t measured by the speed of your migration, but by the quality of the decisions you make throughout the journey. When treated as a strategic transformation rather than a one-off project, migration delivers lasting value across your business. Most successful migrations are guided by a few essential actions:

• Planning thoughtfully to minimize disruption
• Aligning decisions to business outcomes
• Establishing operational frameworks for visibility and control
• Exploring funding options to reduce costs

Accelerate your migration with expert guidance — and potential AWS funding

If your organization is ready to modernize on AWS, the Rackspace Rapid Migration Offer provides a clear, strategic path forward. Designed for businesses migrating 100 or more VMs to AWS, it brings clarity, confidence and speed to every phase of the journey. Guided by our proven four-phase approach — assess, mobilize, migrate and manage — we support you from early planning through post-migration success.

"In my experience, the typical velocity to migrate 20 VMs is about one week,” said Scott Branch, Cloud Advisory Leader at Rackspace Technology. “With the Rackspace Rapid Migration Offer, we can scale that to 100 VMs in the same timeframe. If that’s the pace a customer wants, we can support it.”

The Rackspace Rapid Migration Offer starts with a complimentary two-hour consultation to assess your migration scope, evaluate licensing and costs, and determine eligibility for AWS-funded support —which in some cases could reduce migration costs to zero.

From there, Rackspace delivers a fully guided experience across every phase, combining speed with strategic execution. This offer also includes a two-month trial of Rackspace Modern Operations, providing 24x7x365 support and expert guidance to help your team stabilize and scale post-migration.

“The Rackspace Rapid Migration Offer is a very compelling package,” said Rahul Chugh, Software Architect at AWS. “It takes customers from initial qualification all the way through to an automated, fully provisioned AWS environment.”

In a video that explains the offer, Branch and Chugh walk through the four key phases and illustrate how Rackspace helps reduce friction at every step. Whether you’re exiting a legacy data center, modernizing aging systems or preparing for a cloud-first future, the Rackspace Rapid Migration Offer gives you a fast, smart, and resilient path to AWS. 

Explore the Rackspace Rapid Migration Offer or watch the video