How to Choose an AWS Migration Service Provider in India: 2026 Evaluation Framework

Moving workloads to AWS is only one part of a successful migration.

For an enterprise, the bigger decision is choosing a partner that can assess what should move, build a realistic migration roadmap, minimise operational risk, modernise the right workloads, control costs and continue supporting the environment after migration.

That makes selecting an AWS migration service provider less about finding a vendor that can execute a technical move and more about finding a partner capable of supporting the complete cloud journey.

For Indian enterprises, the decision may also involve regional architecture, data requirements, industry-specific governance, local support capabilities and the ability to work within an organisation’s long-term cloud operating model.

This evaluation framework explains what enterprises should examine before selecting an AWS migration partner in India.

Quick Answer: What Should You Look for in an AWS Migration Service Provider?

Before shortlisting a provider, evaluate whether it can demonstrate:

• Validated AWS migration and modernisation expertise
• A structured discovery and assessment methodology
• Relevant experience with your applications and workloads
• Workload-specific migration planning rather than a one-size-fits-all approach
• Security and governance built into the migration
• A clear testing, cutover and rollback methodology
• Cost, licensing and FinOps capabilities
• Application and database modernisation expertise
• Post-migration AWS managed services
• Relevant customer case studies with measurable outcomes
• Clear documentation, governance and knowledge transfer

The right provider should be able to explain not only how your workloads will move, but also why each migration decision is appropriate for your business.

Why Choosing the Right AWS Migration Partner Matters in 2026

Enterprise migration has evolved considerably beyond lift-and-shift projects.

Organisations today may be migrating because they need to:

• Exit or consolidate data centres
• Improve scalability and resilience
• Modernise legacy applications
• Reduce infrastructure management overhead
• Strengthen disaster recovery
• Improve security and governance
• Support analytics or AI initiatives
• Optimise cloud expenditure
• Move workloads from another cloud to AWS
• Create a more flexible technology foundation

Modernisation may happen during the migration or after workloads have stabilised.

AWS itself now distinguishes migration and modernisation capabilities within its Migration and Modernization Competency. Migration expertise includes patterns such as rehost, relocate and like-to-like replatforming, while modernisation can involve deeper replatforming or refactoring to make better use of cloud-native services.

A migration provider should therefore be able to determine which workloads need to move, which should change and which may not need to move at all.

Understand the Different Types of AWS Migration Providers

Not every AWS partner operates in the same way.

The best model depends on the organisation’s internal capabilities.

An enterprise with a mature AWS operations team may only require migration expertise. Another organisation may need the same partner to continue managing its AWS environment after go-live.

What Should an AWS Migration Provider Assess Before Giving You a Plan?

One of the first signs of a credible migration provider is its willingness to understand the environment before recommending a solution.

A proper migration assessment should examine:

• Applications and infrastructure
• Servers and databases
• Application dependencies
• Resource utilisation
• Data volumes
• Software and operating-system requirements
• Existing licences
• Security requirements
• Compliance requirements
• Business criticality
• Recovery objectives
• Existing cloud maturity
• Current operating costs

The output should go beyond an asset inventory.

It should help answer:

What should migrate?
How should it migrate?
In what sequence?
What will it cost?
What are the major risks?
What should be modernised?

Enterprises should be cautious when a provider recommends an architecture or submits a final migration quotation before completing meaningful discovery.

How Should a Provider Apply AWS Migration Strategies?

AWS migration strategies are commonly used to determine the right path for each workload.

Rather than explaining the complete migration framework again here, enterprises should assess whether the provider can appropriately apply strategies such as rehost, relocate, replatform, repurchase, retain, retire and refactor based on individual workload requirements.

A provider recommending lift-and-shift for every application may be optimising for migration speed rather than long-term value.

For a detailed understanding of the migration lifecycle and strategies, this article should link internally to CloudThat’s AWS Migration: A Complete Guide for Businesses in 2026.

The key question during provider evaluation is:

Can the provider explain why a particular migration strategy has been selected for each critical workload?

What Indian Enterprises Should Consider When Choosing an AWS Migration Provider

An AWS migration strategy for an Indian organisation may involve considerations that go beyond technical migration capability.

AWS regional architecture

AWS operates two regions in India: Asia Pacific Mumbai and Asia Pacific Hyderabad. The Hyderabad region is AWS’s second region in India and, like Mumbai, provides three Availability Zones.

A provider should be able to help the organisation determine appropriate architecture based on factors such as:

• Availability
• Resilience
• Latency
• Disaster recovery
• Business continuity
• Data requirements

Simply locating workloads in India does not automatically constitute a complete resilience or compliance strategy.

Industry experience

Cloud environments supporting healthcare, financial services or government workloads can have very different governance requirements from those supporting a media platform or an e-commerce application.

Enterprises should therefore ask for experience relevant to their own sector.

CloudThat has confirmed AWS migration experience across:

Manufacturing, Media and Entertainment, Software and Internet, Education, Financial Services, Government, Transportation and Logistics, Retail, Healthcare, Automotive and Agriculture.

Local delivery and operational support

Evaluate whether the provider can offer:

• India-based technical teams
• Clearly defined escalation processes
• Support coverage matching business requirements
• AWS architecture expertise
• Operational handover
• Managed services after migration
• Customer references relevant to the region

This becomes especially important for organisations that require ongoing cloud operations rather than only a migration project.

10 Criteria for Evaluating AWS Migration Service Providers

1. Verified AWS Migration and Modernisation Expertise

Start with evidence.

Check:

• Relevant AWS competencies
• AWS partner status
• Migration and modernisation capability
• AWS-certified expertise
• Relevant migration experience
• Customer evidence

AWS states that its Competency programme is intended to identify partners with demonstrated technical expertise and customer success in specialised areas.

CloudThat has confirmed that it holds the AWS Migration and Modernization Competency and has completed 80+ AWS migration and modernisation engagements, including projects involving applications, workloads, databases, data and infrastructure.

That experience becomes more meaningful when accompanied by case studies relevant to the workload an enterprise plans to migrate.

2. A Structured Assessment and Business Case

A migration partner should be able to explain:

• How discovery will be performed
• How dependencies will be identified
• How workloads will be prioritised
• How migration strategies will be selected
• How target costs will be calculated
• Which risks will be documented
• What the organisation receives after assessment

A credible migration business case should account for more than the expected monthly AWS bill.

It may include:

• Current infrastructure costs
• Expected AWS consumption
• Licensing
• Migration programme costs
• Temporary dual-running costs
• Modernisation costs
• Support requirements
• Potential optimisation opportunities

This provides decision-makers with a more realistic view of the total migration programme.

3. Experience With Your Actual Workloads

Ask the provider what it has migrated before.

Depending on the organisation, this could include:

• On-premises servers
• VMware workloads
• Microsoft environments
• Linux workloads
• Enterprise applications
• Databases
• ERP systems
• Data platforms
• Applications hosted on another cloud
• High-availability systems

Migration from Azure to AWS, for example, presents different considerations from moving a traditional on-premises ERP environment.

The provider should demonstrate that its team understands the technologies involved rather than relying solely on a generic migration methodology.

4. Modernisation Capability

A strong migration provider should know when not to modernise.

Refactoring every application during migration can increase time, cost and risk unnecessarily.

Instead, the provider should determine:

• What should be rehosted
• What should be replatformed
• What should be refactored
• What should be replaced
• What should be retired
• What should remain unchanged for now

This is increasingly important because AWS treats migration and modernisation as connected but distinct capabilities.

Modernisation should be linked to a clear business or technical outcome, not undertaken simply because cloud-native technology is available.

5. Security and Governance From the Beginning

Security should not appear as a final item on the migration checklist.

The provider should explain its approach to:

• Identity and access
• Network architecture
• Encryption
• Logging
• Monitoring
• Backup
• Vulnerability management
• Security remediation
• Disaster recovery
• Data handling
• Incident response
• Applicable compliance requirements

Responsibilities should also be explicit.

The organisation should know what the migration provider owns, what AWS is responsible for and what remains the customer’s responsibility.

6. Testing, Cutover and Rollback Planning

Be cautious of a provider promising zero downtime without first assessing the environment.

A credible migration plan should define:

• Expected downtime, where applicable
• Data replication approach
• Testing phases
• User acceptance
• Migration cutover
• Success criteria
• Rollback triggers
• Recovery procedures
• Business-owner approvals
• Hypercare

The objective is not to pretend migration carries no risk. It is to identify those risks and create a controlled process for managing them.

7. FinOps, Cost and Licensing Capability

Cloud costs can become difficult to manage when migration focuses only on getting workloads running.

A provider should consider:

• Right-sizing
• Storage costs
• Data transfer
• Software licensing
• AWS Savings Plans
• Reserved Instances where appropriate
• Backup and disaster recovery
• Growth projections
• Temporary migration resources
• Post-migration optimisation

Ask how the provider approaches FinOps after migration.

Who reviews utilisation?

Who identifies idle resources?

Who recommends cost optimisation?

How frequently are cloud costs reviewed?

This is particularly important when ongoing AWS managed services are included.

8. Post-Migration AWS Managed Services

The migration is not finished merely because the workload is running on AWS.

CloudThat has confirmed that its post-migration managed-services scope can include:

• Hypercare
• Knowledge transfer and operational handover
• Continuous infrastructure monitoring
• Incident and problem management
• Service requests and change management
• Patch management
• Backup monitoring and recovery support
• Security reviews and remediation
• Performance and capacity management
• AWS cost optimisation and FinOps recommendations
• Operational reporting
• Continuous improvement

CloudThat is also an AWS Managed Service Provider Program Partner, with capabilities extending across Infrastructure, DevOps, Data and AI/ML, and Security managed services.

AWS describes its MSP programme as validating partners that can support the cloud journey from planning and migration to ongoing operations and optimisation.

For enterprises that do not have a mature internal cloud operations function, this lifecycle capability can significantly simplify post-migration ownership.

9. Relevant Case Studies With Measurable Outcomes

Customer evidence is one of the strongest ways to evaluate a migration provider.

CloudThat has approved several AWS migration case studies that demonstrate different migration scenarios.

Tvasan Technologies: AWS-to-AWS regional migration

Tvasan Technologies migrated its AWS infrastructure from Singapore to the Mumbai region with CloudThat. The published case study reports a 35% performance improvement alongside strengthened security and improved operational visibility.

Braincade Technology: Azure-to-AWS migration

CloudThat helped Braincade migrate its environment from Azure to AWS using services including Amazon EC2, Aurora, AWS MGN, CloudWatch and CloudTrail. The project reported a 30% reduction in operating costs and a 20% reduction in latency.

Color Cloud Healthcare: On-premises-to-AWS migration

CloudThat supported Color Cloud Healthcare in migrating its ERP environment to AWS. The published outcome reports a 40% performance improvement and 30% reduction in downtime risk, alongside enhanced security.

These examples also illustrate why the provider’s relevant workload experience matters. An account-to-account migration, an Azure-to-AWS migration and an on-premises healthcare migration each require different planning considerations.

10. Governance, Documentation and Knowledge Transfer

A migration should not leave the customer dependent on undocumented knowledge held by the implementation team.

Ask whether the engagement includes:

• Architecture documentation
• Migration runbooks
• Operational procedures
• Security documentation
• Cost-governance processes
• Knowledge transfer
• Team training
• Escalation procedures
• Responsibility matrices
• Service-level agreements

Even when the provider remains responsible for managed operations, the customer should understand how its cloud environment has been designed and operated.

How AWS Migration Providers Structure Their Engagements

Commercial models can differ significantly between providers.

CloudThat has also confirmed that it supports eligible customers through the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP).

AWS describes MAP as a programme designed to help organisations accelerate migration and modernisation through AWS methodology, expertise, tools, partners and applicable incentives.

Eligibility and available programme benefits should always be confirmed for the specific customer and migration opportunity.

Red Flags When Selecting an AWS Migration Provider

Treat the following as warning signs:

• Providing a final migration quote without meaningful discovery
• Recommending lift-and-shift for every application
• Being unable to explain application dependencies
• Promising zero downtime before assessment
• Having no documented rollback strategy
• Treating security as a separate afterthought
• Having no cloud cost or licensing model
• Providing generic client logos instead of relevant case studies
• Having certifications that do not match the workload being migrated
• Providing no clarity around post-migration ownership
• Having no FinOps methodology
• Providing no documentation or knowledge transfer
• Using vague language around support or SLAs
• Being unable to define measurable migration success criteria

A migration provider should be comfortable discussing potential constraints and risks rather than presenting migration as a frictionless technical exercise.

Should the Same Partner Handle AWS Migration and Managed Services?

There are advantages to using one partner for both.
These can include:

• Greater continuity between architecture and operations
• Reduced handover risk
• Clear accountability
• Faster troubleshooting
• Consistent security practices
• Continuous cost optimisation

However, separate providers may also work when:

• The organisation has an established internal cloud operations team
• Managed services are already contracted
• A specialist is required for a particular workload
• Procurement requires multiple vendors
• The organisation prefers separate operational governance

The important point is to determine ownership before the migration is completed.

The design of monitoring, security, documentation and operational processes can be affected by who will ultimately manage the environment.

Why Consider CloudThat for AWS Migration?

CloudThat combines migration expertise with modernisation and ongoing cloud operations.

CloudThat has confirmed:

• AWS Premier Tier Services Partner status
• AWS Migration and Modernization Competency
• AWS Managed Service Provider Program Partner status
• 80+ AWS migration and modernisation engagements
• Support for eligible customers through AWS MAP
• Post-migration managed services spanning Infrastructure, DevOps, Data and AI/ML,
  and Security

CloudThat has delivered AWS migration projects across industries including manufacturing, media and entertainment, software and internet, education, financial services, government, transportation and logistics, retail, healthcare, automotive and agriculture.

Its migration experience includes on-premises-to-AWS, cloud-to-cloud and AWS
account or region migration scenarios, with published customer outcomes
covering improvements in performance, infrastructure cost, latency,
resilience and security.

For organisations looking for support beyond migration, CloudThat’s
managed-services capability can continue through monitoring, security,
cost optimisation, incident management and continuous improvement after
go-live.

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