Migrating Windows workloads to the cloud is beneficial for several reasons. Many organizations choose to migrate Windows infrastructure to refactor legacy .NET applications, improve performance, and boost security. Some want to accelerate innovation using cloud services and infrastructure. Others need to optimize workloads to serve customers better, reduce costs, or prepare for future growth. The takeaway is that the cloud facilitates IT modernization, which is what many Windows users need to serve customers well today.

Organizations that modernize Windows workloads gain access to exciting use cases. They can start to leverage fully managed databases that support new-age business models. Companies can also adopt containers and serverless Windows applications that don’t require hands-on server management. Furthermore, teams can develop better .NET applications that leverage big data, AI/ML, IoT capabilities, and more.

AWS offers a free Optimization and Licensing Assessment (OLA) for determining if there is potential to reduce costs and optimize compute across legacy Windows environments. The program takes actual resource utilization, application dependencies, and third-party licenses into account. Many organizations use their OLA program findings to build cloud migration and licensing strategies that help reduce costs while improving performance.

Organizations use a variety of methods and services to modernize Microsoft workloads on AWS. One popular pathway is to deploy serverless .NET applications with AWS Lambda. Another is to use AWS Fargate to move Windows containers to the cloud without needing to refactor. Windows users also often utilize Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) for Windows container production support and Amazon Aurora to replace legacy SQL Server databases. Beyond these solutions, there are many others that AWS offers to handle Windows workload modernization needs.