Portfolio assessment is a critical phase in the AWS migration journey that involves systematically evaluating an organization's entire application portfolio to determine the optimal migration strategy for each workload. This process helps organizations prioritize which applications to migrate, mode…Portfolio assessment is a critical phase in the AWS migration journey that involves systematically evaluating an organization's entire application portfolio to determine the optimal migration strategy for each workload. This process helps organizations prioritize which applications to migrate, modernize, retire, or retain on-premises.
The assessment typically begins with discovery, where teams catalog all applications, infrastructure components, and their interdependencies. AWS provides tools like AWS Application Discovery Service and AWS Migration Hub to automate this inventory collection, gathering data about servers, databases, and application dependencies.
During portfolio assessment, each application is analyzed against multiple criteria including business value, technical complexity, risk tolerance, and migration readiness. The famous 7 Rs framework guides decision-making: Rehost (lift-and-shift), Replatform (lift-tinker-and-shift), Repurchase (replace with SaaS), Refactor (re-architect for cloud-native), Retire (decommission), Retain (keep on-premises), or Relocate (hypervisor-level migration).
Key factors evaluated include application criticality to business operations, current performance baselines, compliance requirements, licensing considerations, and total cost of ownership. Teams assess technical debt, security vulnerabilities, and whether applications can benefit from cloud-native services.
The output of portfolio assessment includes a prioritized migration wave plan, cost projections, resource requirements, and risk mitigation strategies. Applications are typically grouped into migration waves based on dependencies, complexity, and business priorities. Quick wins with low complexity often migrate first to build team expertise and demonstrate value.
AWS Migration Evaluator (formerly TSO Logic) provides financial analysis and right-sizing recommendations based on actual utilization data. This helps build business cases by projecting cloud costs compared to current infrastructure spending.
Successful portfolio assessment establishes a clear roadmap, reduces migration risks, optimizes resource allocation, and ensures alignment between technical decisions and business objectives throughout the migration program.
Portfolio Assessment for AWS Solutions Architect Professional
What is Portfolio Assessment?
Portfolio Assessment is the systematic process of evaluating an organization's entire application portfolio to determine the best migration strategy for each workload when moving to AWS. This critical first step in cloud migration involves cataloging, analyzing, and prioritizing applications based on various factors including business value, technical complexity, risk, and dependencies.
Why is Portfolio Assessment Important?
Portfolio Assessment is essential because it:
• Reduces migration risk by identifying potential challenges before they become problems • Optimizes resource allocation by helping teams focus on high-value applications first • Enables informed decision-making about which migration strategy (the 7 Rs) to apply to each application • Provides cost estimates for the migration and ongoing cloud operations • Identifies dependencies between applications that could affect migration sequencing • Establishes a baseline for measuring migration success
How Portfolio Assessment Works
The portfolio assessment process typically follows these phases:
1. Discovery and Data Collection Use tools like AWS Application Discovery Service, Migration Evaluator (formerly TSO Logic), or third-party tools to automatically discover and collect data about your on-premises environment. This includes server specifications, utilization metrics, network dependencies, and application mappings.
2. Analysis and Categorization Analyze collected data to understand: • Server and application inventory • Resource utilization patterns • Network traffic and dependencies • Database configurations • Licensing requirements
3. Business Case Development Create a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis comparing current on-premises costs with projected AWS costs. Migration Evaluator provides detailed business case reports.
4. Migration Strategy Assignment (The 7 Rs) Assign each application one of the seven migration strategies: • Retire - Decommission applications no longer needed • Retain - Keep certain applications on-premises • Rehost - Lift and shift to AWS • Relocate - Move to AWS with minimal changes using VMware Cloud on AWS • Repurchase - Move to a SaaS solution • Replatform - Lift, tinker, and shift with minor optimizations • Refactor - Re-architect for cloud-native capabilities
5. Prioritization and Wave Planning Group applications into migration waves based on dependencies, business priorities, and technical readiness.
Key AWS Tools for Portfolio Assessment
• AWS Application Discovery Service - Collects configuration, usage, and behavior data from on-premises servers • AWS Migration Evaluator - Provides insights and projections for cloud planning including business case development • AWS Migration Hub - Central location to track migration progress across multiple AWS and partner tools • AWS Migration Hub Strategy Recommendations - Provides strategy and tool recommendations for applications
Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Portfolio Assessment
Key Concepts to Remember:
• When a question mentions understanding the current on-premises environment or discovering servers and dependencies, think AWS Application Discovery Service
• For questions about building a business case or TCO analysis for migration, the answer typically involves Migration Evaluator
• Questions asking about tracking migration progress across multiple tools point to AWS Migration Hub
• If asked about determining the right migration strategy for applications, consider Migration Hub Strategy Recommendations
• Remember that Application Discovery Service has two modes: Agentless (for VMware environments, collects VM information) and Agent-based (provides detailed data including network connections and running processes)
• For large-scale migrations involving thousands of servers, automated discovery tools are the recommended approach over manual inventory methods
• When questions mention application dependencies or understanding which servers communicate with each other, agent-based discovery provides this network connection data
• Portfolio assessment should occur during the Assess phase of the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP)
• Questions about reducing licensing costs during migration may involve identifying opportunities to move from commercial databases to open-source alternatives during the assessment phase
Common Exam Scenarios:
• A company needs to understand their current infrastructure before migrating - Use Application Discovery Service • An organization wants to justify cloud migration to leadership with cost projections - Use Migration Evaluator • A team needs to determine which applications should be rehosted versus refactored - Use Migration Hub Strategy Recommendations • Multiple teams are using different migration tools and need centralized visibility - Use Migration Hub