The Market Context: Why Cloud Cost Control Matters More Than Ever

Global IT spend continues to accelerate. Gartner forecasts a 9.3% increase in total IT spend in 2025, followed by a further 9.8% increase in 2026. At the same time, cloud and AI adoption is driving a predicted 38% increase in cloud spend through 2026, bringing public cloud investment close to total worldwide software spend. (Source Gartner )

This creates a critical challenge:

Cloud adoption without optimisation often results in higher costs than on-premises environments, particularly when migrations follow a traditional “lift and shift” approach.

Replicating an existing data centre architecture in AWS is rarely cost-optimal. In on-premises environments, organisations pre-buy capacity to accommodate growth. In the public cloud, this approach is unnecessary and expensive.

Synyega’s migration optimisation services address this problem directly, ensuring that cloud environments are right-sized, licence-efficient, and aligned to real usage, not historical assumptions.

What Are Synyega’s Migration Optimisation Services?

Synyega has delivered cloud optimisation services for over four years, with demand accelerating significantly since 2024. Our insights are now based on more than 100 client migration engagements.

At the core of this capability is our Optimisation and Licensing Assessment (OLA) service, designed to help organisations:

• Build a credible, data-driven AWS migration business case
• Decide whether migration is financially viable
• Understand the true cost impact of cloud adoption before committing

The service focuses on two key areas.

Migration Optimisation Services

Whilst Synyega have been delivering these services for over 4 years, the demand for these services has grown exponentially since 2024 and our data analysis is covering these 100 client engagements. 

The Optimisation and Licensing Service (‘OLA’) allows Synyega to assist clients trying to build their business case for migration (or not).  The service covers the following main areas:

Infrastructure Optimisation: Right-Sizing AWS from Day One

Synyega’s expert migration consultants analyse detailed workload data to understand actual consumption, including:

• vCPU utilisation
• Memory usage
• Storage requirements

Rather than assuming peak capacity, we model realistic AWS scenarios that reflect how workloads truly behave. This enables:

• Right-sizing of EC2, storage, and platform services
• Removal of over-provisioned resources
• Significant reductions in ongoing AWS infrastructure costs

Across engagements, this approach consistently delivers substantial per-client reductions in cloud infrastructure spend.

Licensing Optimisation: Reducing Software Costs Before Migration

Software licensing is often the largest hidden cost in cloud migration.

Many enterprise applications are licensed per core, meaning that infrastructure inefficiencies directly inflate licensing requirements. By reducing vCPU counts through infrastructure optimisation, Synyega also reduces the number of licences required.

Our specialist licensing consultants analyse:

• Existing licence entitlements
• Vendor-specific cloud licensing rules
• Deployment and architectural options in AWS

While vendor policies vary, our optimisation strategies mean that only around 10% of clients need to purchase additional licences as part of their cloud migration.

For the vast majority, existing investments can be reused or reduced—often delivering immediate cost avoidance.

FinOps After Migration: Sustaining Cost Control in AWS

Optimisation does not end at go-live.

Once workloads are in AWS, organisations face new challenges around:

• Consumption-based charging
• Budget forecasting
• Cost allocation and accountability
• Balancing speed, resilience, and cost

Synyega’s established FinOps practice helps clients embed financial discipline into cloud operations, enabling teams to:

• Reduce ongoing waste
• Improve visibility and governance
• Align cloud spend with business outcomes

This ensures that cost optimisation becomes a continuous capability, not a one-off exercise.

Future Trends: Modernisation, AI, and Licensing Pressure

Looking towards 2026, several trends are converging:

• Continued increases in software and licensing costs
• More aggressive vendor audit and cloud licensing behaviour
• Rapid growth in AI-driven workloads
• Increasing pressure to modernise legacy platforms

Modernisation is now a strategic priority for organisations seeking to reduce technical debt and unlock innovation, particularly around serverless and edge computing.

Open-source technologies are playing a growing role, with enterprise-grade distributions and supported platforms now offering capabilities once limited to commercial software. Whether organisations are:

• Moving away from Microsoft Windows Server
• Transitioning from VMware hypervisors
• Modernising legacy databases

There are credible alternatives available. Even where migration is not immediate, modelling modernised architecturesoften reveals substantial potential savings, particularly in reduced licensing spend.

Case Study: Damart – Cutting AWS and Licensing Costs by Over 50%

Synyega supported Damart in its strategy to exit a traditional datacentre and consolidate workloads in AWS.

Through combined infrastructure and licensing optimisation, we were able to:

• Reduce AWS infrastructure costs by over 50%
• Cut software licensing costs by over 50%
• Deliver a financially viable migration roadmap

This engagement demonstrates how early optimisation can fundamentally change the economics of cloud adoption.

Practical Tips: How to Reduce AWS Migration Costs

How can organisations reduce the cost of migrating to AWS?
Organisations can significantly reduce AWS migration costs by modelling workloads before migration, optimising infrastructure sizing, and aligning software licensing to actual cloud usage.

Synyega’s Migration Optimisation Services help organisations identify substantial cost optimisation opportunities before committing to AWS. In many cases, these services can be funded by the hyperscaler, such as AWS, removing cost and risk from early-stage planning.

Is there a cost to assessing AWS migration options?
In most cases, no. Synyega can model your workloads at no cost and with no obligation, enabling you to make informed decisions based on real data rather than assumptions.

Conclusion: What Makes a Successful AWS Migration?

What is the most effective approach to AWS migration?
A successful AWS migration is not just a technical exercise—it requires a holistic, business-led approach that balances cost, performance, risk, and long-term value.

Synyega’s view is that migration must be carefully planned with equal focus on technology, commercial outcomes, and operational sustainability. Organisations should ensure they can:

• Optimise AWS infrastructure costs through right-sizing and architecture design
• Optimise software licensing costs before and during migration
• Modernise infrastructure to reduce technical debt and improve agility
• Manage and control workloads using effective FinOps practices

By addressing all four areas together, organisations can ensure cloud migration delivers measurable business value, not just a change in hosting location.

Frequently Asked Questions 

How much can organisations save by optimising AWS migrations?
Synyega clients have collectively identified nearly $250 million in avoided or reduced costs through infrastructure and licensing optimisation.

Why is lift-and-shift to AWS expensive?
Lift-and-shift often replicates on-premises over-provisioning, leading to inflated infrastructure and licensing costs in a consumption-based cloud model.

Do organisations usually need more licences when moving to AWS?
In most cases, no. Only around 10% of Synyega clients need to purchase additional licences after optimisation.

What is FinOps and why is it important?
FinOps is a framework for managing cloud costs, ensuring visibility, accountability, and continuous optimisation after migration.