The Essential First Step in Cost Optimization for Cloud — The OLA
Tags: aws, cloud, costoptimizations, security
Published: 2023-03-14 09:28:53

You are ready to migrate to Amazon Web Services, or if you are already on AWS, are you having trouble optimizing for costs?

No matter which side of the fence you are on, the AWS Optimization and Licensing Assessment (OLA) is a game changer. The OLA helps you reduce costs on third-party licensing costs by evaluating the on-premise and cloud environments; and optimize cloud for resource efficiency and costs.

## How the OLA Helps AWS Optimization
The AWS OLA assessment is a free program that helps businesses on AWS and those planning to migrate to AWS evaluate the current IT environment for optimization. The evaluation considers three main aspects – third party licensing costs, resource utilization and application dependencies. The assessment enables businesses to arrive at the right licensing strategy for moving workloads to AWS.

Here are three reasons for leveraging the OLA Assessment:

**1. Cost Optimization**

Many companies on AWS or considering migration do not have the resources or bandwidth to conduct a full-fledged analysis of their costing and resources. Upon conducting the OLA assessment, most often businesses discover underutilization of servers and systems and the potential to save significantly on costs. Additionally, flexible options for optimizing resource usage on cloud can lead to further cost reductions.

**2. Technology and expertise driven Assessment**

The assessment mandates the use of industry leading tools that evaluate using a data and measurement-based strategy. Experts come with in-depth knowledge of Microsoft licensing agreements and AWS to come up with an objective approach that best suits business and IT needs.

**3. Right sizing and Flexibility on AWS**

The assessment not only helps identify gaps in resource utilization, but the results enable identifying optimal low-cost options suited to various workloads. Based on the assessment, one can determine the right instances and savings packages that are ideal for the business. OLA also leads businesses to choose from flexible licensing options including Bring Your Own License (BYOL), aligning cost with usage.

## The AWS OLA Process – A glimpse into how it works
**1. Discovery**

The first step in the OLA process is to make a thorough discovery of all servers in the environment and determine which resources are to be migrated, retained on-premise, or retired. This helps accurately identify the workloads to be migrated and the scope.

**2. Licensing Assessment**

The Licensing Assessment helps you understand your current licensing usage and get recommendations on pricing options that are thoroughly evaluated to arrive at the most accurate cost estimate for migration. The program also helps identify certain licensing rules that can be leveraged while migrating to AWS.

**3. Data Consolidation**

The OLA provides options to assimilate data on your current deployment using purpose built tools. This step gives a clear picture of the storage, memory and compute on-premise, current usage and costs.

**4. Migration Planning**

The OLA helps plan migration with cost and resource optimization in mind. It provides a projection of various cloud scenarios based on utilization, license purchasing and other criteria. You can also understand the differences between migrating existing licenses as opposed to buying new licenses. Over provisioned on-premise resources can be rightsized on cloud to save on costs and the directional costing can help plan a research backed business case for migration.

## Benefits of OLA

- Helps save atleast 20% on licensing costs – BYOL or purchasing new licenses
- Enables better utilization of servers – 80% of servers are underutilized
- Custom cost models offer various cost options based on resource utilization

## Raising the Migration Bar
With the OLA, businesses that are planning to migrate to AWS can optimize for costs, resources, efficiency and productivity. The OLA also helps companies on AWS streamline their environment for growth and cost efficiency. Leveraging the assessment brings businesses the competitive edge and harness the cloud confidently for best results.  

As an [AWS Premier Consulting Partner](https://www.umbrellainfocare.com/), Umbrella Infocare can help businesses optimize the OLA for best results.

_This article is originally published on [Umbrella Infocare Blog](https://www.umbrellainfocare.com/blogs/the-essential-first-step-in-cost-optimization-for-cloud-the-ola)_