How the AWS Migration Acceleration Program Works — And How SaaS Companies Qualify for Funded Migration

AWS will fund part of your cloud migration. Most companies either don’t know this, or don’t know how to access it. This guide explains both.

The AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) is one of the most underutilized financial resources available to companies migrating to AWS — particularly for mid-market and enterprise organizations in EMEA and MENA where large-scale on-premises infrastructure modernization programs are in active planning or execution.

MAP is an AWS-funded program that reduces the cost, risk, and complexity of migrating to AWS at scale. For qualified organizations, it provides direct financial incentives (cash credits applied against AWS spend), access to AWS migration tooling and methodology, and delivery support through certified AWS migration acceleration program partners like Atomic Computing.

This guide explains how MAP works, who qualifies, what the funding covers, and how to engage with the program through a certified partner.

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What Is the AWS Migration Acceleration Program?

MAP is a structured AWS program designed specifically for organizations migrating significant workloads to AWS — typically 50 or more servers, or equivalent workloads — that need both financial support and a proven delivery methodology to de-risk the migration.

The program has two primary components:

Financial incentives: AWS provides migration credits — cash rebates applied against AWS service consumption — that offset the cost of running parallel environments during migration, data transfer costs, and AWS service consumption during the migration execution phase. The credit value scales with the size and complexity of the migration.

Methodology and tooling: MAP provides access to AWS’s Migration Readiness Assessment framework, AWS Migration Hub for centralized tracking, AWS Application Discovery Service for automated dependency mapping, and AWS Database Migration Service for database migrations. These tools are available through the MAP engagement at no additional cost.

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The Three Phases of MAP Delivery

Phase 1 — Assess

The Assess phase produces the business case and migration strategy that MAP funding is based on. In this phase, the AWS migration acceleration program partner conducts a Migration Readiness Assessment (MRA) — evaluating your organization’s readiness across six dimensions: business case, migration planning, portfolio discovery, skills and center of excellence, operating model, and migration execution.

The MRA produces two outputs: a readiness score that identifies the areas requiring investment before migration begins, and a preliminary migration business case — including estimated total cost of ownership comparison between your current environment and the optimized AWS target state — that forms the basis of your MAP funding application.

This is where many organizations benefit from combining the MAP Assess phase with an AWS Optimization and Licensing Assessment (OLA). The OLA’s utilization data and right-sizing analysis directly feeds the migration business case — making the financial case for MAP funding significantly stronger and ensuring that the AWS target architecture is sized from actual data rather than estimates.

Phase 2 — Mobilize

The Mobilize phase closes the readiness gaps identified in the Assess phase and prepares your organization for migration execution. This phase produces the detailed migration runbooks, architecture documentation, operational readiness frameworks, and team training required to execute migrations at scale without disrupting business operations.

For most organizations, Mobilize is the phase where the cloud landing zone design is implemented — the governed, secure AWS environment that all migrated workloads will land in. Getting the landing zone right in Mobilize prevents the governance debt and security remediations that plague migrations that skip this step.

Phase 3 — Migrate and Modernize

The execution phase. Workloads are migrated in prioritized waves according to the migration runbooks and 7R strategies defined in Mobilize. MAP credits are active during this phase, offsetting the cost of parallel operations as migrated workloads are validated before the legacy environment is decommissioned.

Modernization work — replatforming and refactoring selected workloads — runs in parallel with the migration execution. This ensures that the modernization investment begins generating returns before the full migration is complete, rather than being deferred to a separate, post-migration phase.

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Who Qualifies for MAP Funding?

MAP qualification is assessed by AWS during the Assess phase based on several criteria:

• Migration scope: typically 50+ servers or equivalent workloads (virtual machines, containers, databases) migrating to AWS
• AWS spend commitment: MAP is designed for organizations that will generate meaningful AWS spend post-migration — the program is not designed for small-scale migrations
• Engagement through a certified partner: MAP engagements must be delivered through an AWS migration acceleration program partner who is certified to deliver the MAP methodology
• Genuine on-premises migration: MAP is designed for organizations migrating from on-premises infrastructure, not for organizations moving between cloud providers (though cloud-to-cloud migrations may qualify under separate programs)

For SaaS companies in EMEA and MENA specifically: if your organization is running significant on-premises infrastructure and has not yet begun cloud migration, MAP is likely available to you — and the financial benefit of accessing the program through a qualified partner typically far exceeds the cost of the engagement.

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The Role of a Certified AWS Migration Acceleration Program Partner

MAP engagements must be delivered through a certified AWS migration acceleration program partner — an AWS Advanced or Premier Partner that has completed the MAP competency certification and demonstrated delivery capability across the three phases of the program.

The partner’s role in MAP is threefold:

Methodology delivery: The partner delivers the MAP methodology — MRA, Mobilize runbooks, and migration execution — using AWS-approved tools and frameworks. This is not optional. AWS funding is contingent on methodology compliance.

Funding facilitation: The partner manages the MAP funding application process with AWS on your behalf — submitting the required documentation, managing credit allocation, and ensuring that the business case presented to AWS is accurate and complete.

Technical delivery: The partner’s engineering team executes the migration — running the assessment tooling, building the landing zone, executing migration waves, and validating migrated workloads against performance and security baselines.

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MAP vs Standard Cloud Migration — The Financial Difference

To illustrate the financial impact of MAP: an organization migrating 200 servers to AWS with a projected post-migration monthly spend of $80,000 would typically qualify for MAP credits in the range of $150,000–$400,000 (credits scale with migration size and committed spend — exact amounts depend on AWS assessment). Applied against migration execution costs, these credits can reduce the total out-of-pocket migration investment by 30–50%.

For organizations where the migration business case has a positive ROI but the upfront migration investment is a barrier to approval — a common scenario in organizations where the CFO controls capital allocation — MAP funding can transform a borderline-approvable project into a straightforward financial decision.

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How to Initiate a MAP Engagement

1. Select a certified AWS migration acceleration program partner. Not all AWS partners are MAP-certified. Verify that your partner holds the AWS Migration Competency and has MAP delivery experience.
2. Request a Migration Readiness Assessment. The MRA is the formal starting point for MAP and is typically conducted as a complimentary engagement for organizations that qualify for the program.
3. Complete the MAP funding application. Your partner manages this process — you provide the infrastructure and financial information required, and the partner submits the application to AWS.
4. Execute the MAP engagement across the three phases. Assess, Mobilize, Migrate. Credits are allocated during the execution phase.