Boosting Sustainability: Migrating On-Premise Microsoft Workloads to AWS

Introduction

Pressure from shareholders, customers, and employees for businesses to improve sustainability is becoming an important driver in adopting cloud technology.

The ability to pivot quickly has never been more important for businesses. Many are driving modernization programs and looking to innovate in an increasingly competitive landscape. At the same time, businesses face strong economic headwinds, continued skills shortages, shifting customer demands, and increased government regulation. According to TechTarget’s 2023 IT Priorities survey, 44% of European IT buyers already say their organization takes a cloud-first approach.

Many businesses realize the cost, performance, scalability, and reliability benefits of migrating their Microsoft applications and workloads to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. AWS supports everything you need to build and run Microsoft or Windows applications on the cloud with higher performance, stronger reliability, and greater security. This includes:

• Microsoft Active Directory;
• Microsoft SQL Server;
• All supported versions of Windows Server.

There are several reasons why organisations are increasingly migrating their Microsoft
workloads to AWS. One study by IDC shows they will lower their cost of running Windows workloads by 56% over five years when they migrate to AWS. That means they not only reduce their infrastructure and operational costs, but also minimise the economic impact of unplanned outages. IDC projects that customers will realise an average return on investment of 442% over five years.

Cost Savings and Business Outcomes

There are several reasons why organizations are increasingly migrating their Microsoft workloads to AWS. One study by IDC shows they will lower their cost of running Windows workloads by 56% over five years when they migrate to AWS. That means they reduce their infrastructure and operational costs and minimize the economic impact of unplanned outages. IDC projects that customers will realize an average return on investment of 442% over five years.

Driving Better Business Outcomes

Migration of Windows workloads to AWS brings more than cost savings – it helps create an environment that lets businesses drive better business outcomes. When you reduce the operational burden on IT, you can focus on more strategic and forward-looking initiatives that help you drive value for the business.

Sustainability as a Key Business Consideration

Sustainability is now a crucial business consideration. Stakeholder pressure – customers, employees, and shareholders – drives businesses to adopt sustainable practices. Research shows ESG factors influence employment decisions for almost half of UK office workers, with millennials and younger workers driving the growing trend of 'climate quitting' – seeking a more environmentally friendly job. More than 40% of Gen Z and millennials have changed jobs or sectors due to climate concerns or plan to do so.

ESG Regulations and Reporting

Governments across Europe are introducing mandatory ESG regulations. For example, the UK introduced its first Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures law in April 2022, legally requiring large companies and financial institutions to disclose climate-related risks and opportunities. Meanwhile, European legislation will require organizations to report on the emissions throughout their value chain. The European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive aims to bring sustainability reporting on par with financial reporting, thereby making companies more transparent in their commitments to sustainability. Under the proposed value chain sustainability reporting, companies must report Scope 3 emissions resulting from a company’s upstream and downstream activities.

Achieving Sustainability Goals

There is another major factor that is driving cloud adoption among organizations: sustainability. No longer a “nice-to-have,” sustainability is an increasingly important business consideration when it comes to purchasing and consuming IT.

There are several reasons for this. A significant consideration is stakeholder pressure – customers, employees, and shareholders are all putting pressure on businesses when it comes to their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) responsibilities.

Research shows ESG factors are influencing employment decisions for almost half of UK office workers, with millennials and younger workers driving the growing trend of “climate quitting” – seeking a more environmentally friendly job. More than 40% of Gen Z and millennials have changed jobs or sectors due to climate concerns or plan to do so.

Meanwhile, customer demand for sustainable solutions from their suppliers means more than 75% of customer requests for proposals (RFPs) have sustainability criteria included. Investors, too, are favoring businesses with robust ESG frameworks, with funding increasingly directed toward companies focused on sustainability.

“Sustainability has become a C-level topic,” says Jeroen van der Leer, cloud consultant at Xebia. “ESG is now a business metric for companies. It’s important for their reputation and branding. It’s also about talent acquisition and retention, and customer acquisition and retention.”

Customer demand is not the only driver of sustainability, with governments across Europe introducing mandatory ESG regulations. For example, the UK introduced its first Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures law in April 2022, legally requiring large companies and financial institutions to disclose climate-related risks and opportunities.

Meanwhile, there is European legislation that will require organizations to report on the emissions throughout their value chain. The European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive aims to bring sustainability reporting on par with financial reporting, thereby making companies more transparent in their commitments to sustainability. Under the proposed value chain sustainability reporting, companies would be required to report Scope 3 emissions – those resulting from a company’s upstream and downstream activities.

AWS Leading on Sustainability

The good news is that businesses in Europe can reduce their energy use by nearly 80% when they run their applications on the AWS cloud instead of operating their data centers. A report by global research firm 451 Research, commissioned by AWS, also found that migrating compute workloads to AWS across Europe could decrease greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equal to the footprint of millions of households."

"AWS is fully dedicated to sustainability. It aimed to become net-zero carbon by 2040 and have 100% renewable energy maintaining its data centers by 2030. They are five years ahead on the renewable energy, so by 2025 – less than two years from now – every AWS data center will be running 100% on renewable energy,” says Michel Zitman, practice lead cloud financial management at Xebia.

Cloud data centers are efficient because cloud providers focus on sustainability. They operate servers at much higher utilization rates and design facilities to use less energy and water. As such, the 451 Research study found that cloud servers are roughly three times more energy efficient than the average European company's computing resources. Compared with the computing resources of the average European company, cloud servers are roughly three times more energy efficient.AWS data centers are up to five times more energy efficient. Moving a megawatt of a typical compute workload from a European organization’s data center to the AWS cloud could reduce carbon emissions by up to 1,079 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year.

In addition, organizations could potentially cut carbon emissions of an average workload by up to 96% when AWS reaches its goal of purchasing 100% of its energy from renewable sources, which AWS aims to hit by 2025.

“AWS is fully dedicated to sustainability. It aimed to become net-zero carbon by 2040 and have 100% renewable energy maintaining its data centers by 2030. They are five years ahead on the renewable energy, so by 2025 – less than two years from now – every AWS data center will be running 100% on renewable energy,” says Michel Zitman, practice lead cloud financial management at Xebia.

In addition, in 2022, AWS's parent company, Amazon, set a new record for the most renewable energy purchased by a single company. 'Renewable energy contracts compensate energy consumption,' says Jeroen van der Leer, cloud consultant at Xebia. 'Plus, you have the option to further reduce your carbon footprint by migrating to even more energy-efficient architectures, for instance, AWS’ processor architecture Graviton, which has been developed for cloud applications that run at scale and is much more energy efficient than the standard x86 architectures. Organizations have a big opportunity to modernize and leverage those technologies and even further reduce their carbon footprint, even though renewable energy contracts are already compensating.

Xebia: The Migration Expert

As a highly experienced AWS Partner, Xebia is an expert in migrating Microsoft workloads to the cloud. Its global team of consultants operates worldwide to plan, build, and manage cloud solutions for any challenge in any time zone at any scale.

As Microsoft enterprise customers will know, licensing is a huge investment. That’s why Xebia offers an optimized licensing assessment to leverage your existing licenses in AWS and advise you on how best to utilize them by choosing a specific solution or target architecture.

"Certainly, the overall cost of ownership can be significantly lower in the cloud compared to traditional on-premise solutions," says Zitman. "However, it's not just about cost savings. It's about driving better business outcomes, achieving sustainability goals, and gaining the agility to respond to changing market dynamics."

GreenOps Practice

Regarding sustainability, Xebia’s dedicated GreenOps practice ensures organizations have the critical insight they need into their IT consumption.

"Often when we ask customers what their carbon footprint is in their on-premise data center or colocation facility, they can have a tough time answering that," says Jeroen van der Leer. "But we can calculate upfront how their carbon footprint would improve. If you make any changes to your architecture, you can easily see the impact that change might have on your carbon footprint."

It doesn’t stop there. After migration, Xebia can continue to track what your carbon footprint looks like. Advanced reporting not only means your organization can fulfill its regulatory requirements but also helps to achieve sustainability goals and continually improve and optimize your IT usage.

Conclusion

Migrating to AWS, the customer can feel comfortable knowing the visibility of their carbon emissions has greatly improved compared with on-premise," says van der Leer. "Xebia’s expertise and experience mean its experts know what it takes to execute cloud migrations within large and small enterprises. The company can also provide managed services to help you leverage the cloud faster and more efficiently. This is a valuable service when organizations have business goals to achieve but limited resources, allowing them to release their hard-pressed IT teams to focus on other revenue-generating activities.

Xebia operates globally, but customer intimacy remains a core value. 'We understand the value of being a trusted adviser and what it takes to migrate Microsoft workloads to AWS successfully, ' says van der Leer. 'With full capabilities across Windows migrations and modernizations, we can work with your in-house teams to ensure a smooth, efficient, and effective cloud transition.

Get started with your Cloud Sustainability Journey on our website.