AWS Migration Acceleration Program for Windows now generally available

Amazon Web Services on Monday announced the general availability of its Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) for Windows. First previewed at AWS re:Invent 2019, the program aims to help organizations execute large-scale migrations and modernizations of Windows workloads on AWS.

Specifically, MAP for Windows offers prescriptive guidance, consulting support from experts, tools, training and service credits to help reduce the risk and cost of migrating to the cloud. It's also designed to help customers reduce licensing costs by adopting cloud-native and open source technologies. 

At re:Invent last year, AWS CEO Andy Jassy criticized Microsoft's licensing practices and said its rival is "not prioritizing what matters to you guys, the customers." As ZDNet's Larry Dignan notes, he wasn't necessarily targeting Azure, but Microsoft licensing changes that limit how businesses can deploy Windows and SQL Server in the cloud with existing licenses. 

MAP for Windows comprises three steps: a migration readiness assessment, a mobilization phase aimed at fixing the gaps identified in the assessment phase, and a migrate/modernize phase conducted with the help of Amazon Partner Network members and the AWS ProServe team.

In Monday's blog post, Amazon cited IDC figures showing that AWS hosts nearly twice as many Windows Server instances in the cloud as Microsoft Azure.