Selecting your first workloads to migrate your organization to Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The article provides guidance on how to select the initial workloads to migrate to AWS for a successful cloud migration. It emphasizes the importance of choosing the right workloads early on to minimize risks, build cloud skills within the organization, and realize cloud benefits faster.

Specifically, the article covers:

• Key business-focused criteria to evaluate workloads, such as the impact of migrating the application, mitigating circumstances (e.g., contract expirations, software end-of-life), and technical team skill development.
• Risk-based criteria, including business criticality, technical complexity (dependencies, SLA requirements, lack of documentation), and software support status.
• Risk mitigation strategies, like working with AWS Partners and selecting the appropriate migration strategy (e.g., Rehost, Relocate).
• A data-driven approach using a weighted matrix to prioritize workloads based on the defined criteria, with an example scenario.
• Conclusion emphasizing the importance of adjusting criteria and weightings as skills and experiences are gained throughout the migration journey.