Experience-Based Acceleration: A pre-migration guide to success (Part 1)

Organizations across industries are accelerating their digital transformation and realizing cloud value through AWS Experience-Based Acceleration (EBA), a transformation methodology using hands-on, agile, and immersive engagements. Hundreds of enterprises at various levels of cloud maturity have harnessed EBA to build cloud foundations, migrate at scale, modernize their businesses, and innovate for their customers. They have succeeded because of a proven learn-by-doing working model that seamlessly scales to drive business value, all while following the AWS Well-Architected Framework.

However, successful cloud migration requires more than just technical tools—it demands a solid foundation of knowledge and infrastructure. As AWS Solutions Architects who’ve guided hundreds of enterprises through EBA migrations, we’ve observed a common challenge: organizations often rush into migration without establishing proper cloud foundations, leading to preventable setbacks.

In this two-part series, we will explore how to set up your environment for success prior to and after a migration EBA. In Part 1, we explore how you can leverage AWS Training and Certification resources to prepare your environment and teams for a successful EBA migration. To learn more about how migration EBAs are executed, visit this blog post. In Part 2, we will focus on establishing robust post-migration operations.

This guide is for cloud architects, IT leaders, and infrastructure teams preparing for EBA migrations to AWS. You’ll learn how to build a robust cloud foundation through targeted learning paths. By the end of this blog, you’ll have a clear roadmap for preparing your environment and teams for a successful EBA migration.

Understanding gaps in your cloud foundation

A robust cloud foundation encompasses four critical pillars:

1. Account structure and organization
2. Network design
3. Security controls and compliance
4. Reliability, high availability, load balancing and scalability

Building team expertise

AWS Skill Builder is our online learning center where you can access 600+ free trainings, prepare for your certification exam, and gain hands-on skills with lab experiences, generative AI-powered simulations, and instructor-driven digital courses. The below courses are a great starting point to building your foundational AWS knowledge:

• AWS Foundations: Getting Started with the AWS Cloud Essentials (1 hour)
• AWS Well-Architected Foundations (3 hours)
• Introduction to the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) (45 mins)

You can also leverage AWS Workshops which are free, hands-on and self-paced tutorials designed to introduce practical skills, techniques, or concepts which you can use to solve business problems. All the pillars discussed below have workshops related to them. We suggested some workshops for each pillar, but feel free to explore more workshops by using the search toolbar at the top of the AWS Workshops homepage or by directly searching service names or use cases.

Optional Certification:

• The AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner validates foundational, high-level understanding of AWS Cloud, services, and terminology. This is a good starting point on the AWS Certification journey for individuals with no prior IT or cloud experience switching to a cloud career or for line-of-business employees looking for foundational cloud literacy. You can prepare for this certification with the AWS Skill Builder course AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials (7 hours).

Now, let’s examine each cloud foundation pillar and the resources available to help you build expertise in each area. All the AWS Skill Builder courses suggested below are free of charge and do not require an individual or a team subscription.

Account structure and organization

Before starting your EBA migration, you need to establish a well-architected account structure. Key aspects include:

• Setting up your account configuration and landing zone
• Implementing appropriate account segregation, for example based on environment (dev, uat, prod), department, or business unit
• Configuring Identity and Access Management (IAM)
• Establishing billing and cost management processes

Recommended AWS Skill Builder course:

• Designing Landing Zone Architectures with AWS Control Tower (2 hours)

Optional AWS Workshops for hands-on experience:

• AWS Control Tower Workshop (8 hours)
• AWS General Immersion Day (3 hours)

Network design

A properly designed network architecture ensures secure and efficient workload communication. Key aspects include:

• Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) and subnet design
• Hybrid connectivity design
• Network segmentation design
• Firewall setup

Recommended AWS Skill Builder courses:

• AWS Networking Basics (2 hours)
• Subnets, Gateways, and Route Tables Explained (17 mins)
• Configuring and Deploying VPCs with Multiple Subnets (1 hour)
• AWS Network Connectivity Options (2.5 hours)

Optional AWS Workshops for hands-on experience:

• AWS Networking Workshop (8 hours)

Security controls and compliance

At AWS, security is our top priority. As such, we advise customers to integrate security into their foundation from day one. Key aspects include:

• Access control design
• Security groups design
• Data protection strategies
• Security monitoring and response

Recommended AWS Skill Builder courses:

• AWS Security Fundamentals (2 hours)
• AWS Security Best Practices: Overview (1.75 hours)

Optional AWS Workshops for hands-on experience:

• Least Privilege with IAM Access Analyzer (1 hour)

Reliability: High availability, load balancing and scalability

Reliability is one of the six pillars of AWS Well-Architected Framework focusing on ensuring a system’s ability to perform its intended functions correctly and consistently.

• You can achieve high availability by deploying resources across multiple Availability Zones (AZs) within an AWS Region, using services like Auto Scaling Groups (ASG) to automatically replace failed instances and maintain application uptime.
• You can introduce load balancing to your workload through Elastic Load Balancers (ELB), which distribute incoming traffic across multiple targets like EC2, Containers, or Lambda functions, while also performing health checks to route traffic only to healthy instances.
• You can implement scalability both horizontally (adding more instances) and vertically (upgrading instance sizes) through services like ASG and EC2, where resources can automatically scale based on metrics like CPU utilization, network traffic, or custom CloudWatch metrics.

Together, these features ensure applications remain available, performant, and cost-effective, even during peak loads or component failures.

Practical implementation steps to get your environment ready

In three steps, you can get your environment foundationally ready ahead of the migration EBA.

Step 1: Assess your current state (2-3 weeks)

• Conduct a Learning Needs Analysis (free self-assessment tool) to identify your organization’s cloud skills gaps
• Evaluate existing infrastructure and identify gaps
• Document compliance requirements
• Map team skills to required competencies

Step 2: Design your foundation (4-6 weeks)

• Develop landing zone architecture
• Plan network topology
• Define security controls
• Create IAM strategy
• Plan for reliability, high availability, load balancing, and scalability

Step 3: Build and validate (6-8 weeks)

• Implement landing zone
• Configure network components
• Deploy security controls
• Validate against Well-Architected Framework

Next Steps

• Register for AWS Skill Builder and begin the recommended courses.
• Schedule a Learning Needs Analysis to identify your organization’s cloud skills gaps.
• Join the AWS Community for peer support.
• Optional: Start your AWS Certification journey.

As you embark on your migration EBA, your Solutions Architect is there for you every step of the way, and can engage other AWS teams to enhance your journey. For example, if you need help with technical troubleshooting, your Solutions Architect can connect you with AWS Support and make recommendations for which support tier is best for your business. For customers who need support with any hands-on implementation, your Solutions Architect can also connect you with AWS Professional Services or the AWS Partner Network to implement infrastructure build-out on your behalf. Lastly, your Solutions Architect can work with you to evaluate if your team should manage your solution in-house or pass the management overhead to AWS Managed Services. Learn more about how to engage an AWS Solutions Architect in this blog post.

By following this structured approach to cloud foundation preparation, you can ensure your organization is well-positioned for a successful EBA migration. Remember, the time invested in preparation will yield returns through smoother migration processes and better outcomes. In Part 2 of this series, we will focus on establishing robust post-migration operations.

Ready to build your cloud foundation? Start your learning journey today on AWS Skill Builder. For personalized guidance, contact your AWS account team to schedule a Learning Needs Analysis.

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