AWS Partner ClearScale Launches ‘Powerful’ Cloud Migration Platform

From seamlessly migrating on-premises customers to AWS to helping businesses move away from complex Microsoft licensing, ClearScale One is a new platform designed to accelerate migration to the AWS cloud.

ClearScale makes migrating to the Amazon Web Services cloud easier than ever with the launch of ClearScale One, which offers customers a comprehensive cloud migration and modernization strategy without the typical financial and operational burdens associated with large migrations.

From helping customers transition away from Microsoft software licenses to increasing ROI for on-premises customers, ClearScale empowers businesses to transition away from legacy systems with the new ClearScale One platform.

“It’s so overwhelming for a customer to think about migrating and then have to put all these pieces of the puzzle together to make it happen,” ClearScale CEO Jimmy Chui tells CRN. “ClearScale One is a repeatable program that includes partners, technologies, methodologies, and services that have been carefully and strategically designed to help customers modernize their applications and infrastructure on AWS.”

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San Francisco-based ClearScale is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner that has completed over 400 migrations to AWS and over 1,000 AWS cloud projects for customers.

ClearScale One Failure

ClearScale One designs, deploys, and manages customers through a five-step AWS cloud modernization process.

It starts with developing a plan and creating the operational platform needed for a successful AWS adoption—such as security infrastructure, landing zones, and operating models. Then ClearScale experts implement and migrate applications to AWS.

ClearScale then drives cloud optimization and modernization efforts while maintaining full management of the customer’s environment. The solution provider can then become a long-term partner for the customer to modernize after migration or to develop new features and applications after the move to the cloud.

“Companies need to focus on their core competencies, rather than trying to be the best they can be at managing infrastructure,” said Chui (pictured). “We’re combining all the practices we’ve been doing so that customers can have a smooth path.”

AWS MAP, AI, and Partnerships Help Reduce Costs

Financially, ClearScale leverages incentives offered by AWS cloud migration partners—such as the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP)—to help customers transition to new technology, as well as provide them with total cost projections.

“AWS is launching programs to help customers not only move to AWS, but also leverage and reduce their Microsoft license footprint by: moving away from Windows, moving from .NET to .Net Core, and moving to Linux-based containers, which reduces Microsoft’s overall licensing footprint,” Chui said. “In addition, some of the funding can be used to move away from Microsoft SQL Server and move to PostgresSQL or another technology.”

For companies with physical data centers, ClearScale leverages independent software vendor (ISV) partnerships to transform capital assets into OpEx models or extend hardware support as they transition to AWS.

To help modernize, ClearScale uses advanced code-level investigation tools to analyze application architectures and provide targeted guidance. By integrating AI-driven insights, ClearScale One quickly processes large amounts of data to build a strategic migration plan and a compelling business case, Chui said.

“You basically need a lawyer to understand” software licensing

Chui said companies cannot view cloud migration as a purely financial decision.

With ClearScale One, companies can enjoy the benefits of AWS at the same cost they would pay with legacy IT systems. This enables customers to treat cloud computing as a valuable business driver rather than another IT tool.

“If you just look at migration as, ‘OK, what’s the cost of running my data center versus running it in the cloud?’ To just make that financial comparison, you might not meet your business case,” Chui said.

“When you start weaving in things like really complicated licensing—licensing multiple larger vendors—you need a lawyer who understands the details of everything. So we have experts that we work with who say, ‘OK, let’s evaluate their licensing and see how it looks on AWS?’” Chui said. “It’s a powerful platform.”

ClearScale One offers a professional, tool-based assessment of a customer’s current IT infrastructure, including a detailed assessment of complex licensing situations and cloud migration paths.

“There are a lot of things we can do to address the hardware that we’re bringing in. Customers may not be thinking, ‘What are we going to do with our current hardware?’ Or, ‘Hardware support just ended and we’re being forced to sign another two-year commitment when we may only need six months to migrate?’ Well, we have solutions for that, too,” Chui said.

ClearScale One is aimed at enterprises, large small and medium-sized companies

Migrating from on-premises to the AWS cloud becomes a challenge when a company has hundreds of virtual machines (VMs) that it needs to migrate.

“Our ClearScale One platform is designed for complex, large-scale environments. So anywhere north of 500 VMs, you start to see a level of complexity that requires additional oversight and scale,” Chui said.

The ClearScale CEO said the new offering is aimed at larger small and medium-sized businesses and enterprises looking to make such a move.

“It’s about how customers can leverage cloud as part of their business strategy, rather than, ‘This is just some IT resource that we’re paying for,’” Chui said. “There’s a clear distinction between the two. That’s what we wanted to do by coming in with something very comprehensive so that both executives and technical people can see the entire path.”