The journey of how Apperian began saving money by migrating from Rackspace and Joyent to Amazon Web Services. Breaking down the actual total cost of ownership in the cloud allowed Apperian to make a migration plan that resulted in saving 50% on base usage costs and reducing personnel costs by 33%. Learn more https://www.g2techgroup.com/aws-migrations/ Originally presented by Caleb Mills, VP of Operations at G2 Tech Group at the Boston AWS Meetup on May 11, 2017.

1. Spending Money
to Save Money…
And Getting Your Boss to Sign Off
On It
Caleb Mills
Apperian / G2 Tech Group
11 May 2017

2. Introductions
Apperian
• Founded 2009
• VC-backed, acquired by Arxan 2016
• G2 customer since 2011
Myself
• Apperian’s first Ops hire, 2011
• VP of Ops, led team responsible for AWS migration

3. Spending Money to Save Money ... WHAT?
When things are broken, migration/improvement
projects can be easy to sell
What about when are not totally broken?
• ROI not alway clear
• Simple “usage” spend is usually not the full picture
• Often, companies can still save by moving to AWS
Began working on the migration idea in 2013

4. The Checklist:
Calculate the total cost of ownership
Put together a plan
Pitch it to management
Migrate quickly
Save!!
How I Sold the AWS Migration at Apperian

5. The Total Cost of Ownership
Apperian’s Original Providers:
• Rackspace (North America)
• Joyent (Europe)
Operational Costs:
• Frequent outages
• Unsupported operating systems
• Poorly maintained integrations
• Less mature and fewer services

6. Business Cost:
• Large operations team
• Firefighting, maintenance
• No-value custom work
• Low DevOps velocity
• Lost opportunity
• High risk
• “Cool” factor
The Total Cost of Ownership

7. Put Together a Plan
Operations:
• Lower long-term usage costs
• Improved reliability
• Outsourced reactive support
• More focused Ops team
• Better integrations/automation
Business:
• Lower risk
• Security
• Availability
• Disaster Recovery
• More locations
• More flexibility
• More attractive to customers /
acquirers

8. Reference Environment:
• Skunkworks project
• G2 consultation
• Show that:
• Application works
• And, is no more expensive to run
• Align migration with DevOps priorities
Put Together a Plan

9. Pitch it to Management
4 Components
#1 Migration:
• Proven reference environment
• Automation improvements
• QA/Staging
• Production lift & shift
• Production efficiency
improvements
#2 Direct Cost Savings:
• Lower usage cost
• Lower operational costs
• Improved team velocity

10. Pitch it to Management
4 Components
#3 Revenue Opportunities:
• Shorter time-to-market
• Additional geographies
• Easier sales
• More appealing as acquisition
target
#4 Mitigated Risks:
• Security
• Availability
• Disaster Recovery

11. Automation Improvements, QA/Staging:
• Puppet and Terraform
• Automation is your friend
• Right-size QA as part of migration
• Only run instances when in use
• Further validation that production
migration will work
Migrate Quickly

12. Migrate Quickly
Production Lift & Shift:
• Use same automation as QA/Staging
• Limit Downtime
• G2’s advice on data sync
• 2 hr maintenance window, < 1hr downtime

13. Save!!
Lower Costs:
• Base usage costs 50% lower
• Re-invest much into additional resources for Prod/DR
• Lower QA/Staging usage costs
• On-going work - improve infrastructure efficiency
• Outsource work to G2
• Personnel & contractor costs 33% lower

14. Save!!
Increased Efficiency:
• Improved deployments
• Greater DevOps velocity
• Full automation and infrastructure as code

15. Save!!
More Opportunity, Less Risk:
• Time to market
• Security, availability, DR all improved
• More attractive as a business

16. Try it Yourself
The Checklist:
Calculate the total cost of ownership
Put together a plan
Pitch it to management
Migrate quickly
Save!!

17. Thank You
Questions?
cmills@g2techgroup.com