AWS seeks to make legacy Windows apps immortal

Amazon Web Services is hoping to encourage Microsoft customers to eschew Azure and migrate legacy Windows applications into AWS cloud in a form that can survive the demise of future versions of Windows.

The new AWS End-of-Support Migration Program (EMP) for Windows Server offering "includes technology and expert guidance to migrate your legacy applications from Windows Server 2003, 2008, and 2008 R2 to newer, supported versions on AWS, without any refactoring", the cloud provider said.

Interestingly, AWS says EMP “decouples the applications from the underlying OS, enabling AWS Partners or AWS Professional Services to migrate your critical applications to a newer, supported version of Windows Server on AWS.”

“The EMP technology identifies the dependencies that your application has on the outdated OS, and creates a package that includes the resources necessary for the application to run on the newer version of Windows Server,” AWS advises.

The packaging will even allow users to “run the packaged application on future versions of Windows Server, which means you don’t have to worry about upgrading these applications when the next end of support event for Windows Server arrives.”

It also gives holdout Windows Server users some wriggle room in terms of an alternative to paying handsome legacy support prices that ship with Azure, which at the very least changes the dynamic of upgrade negotiations.

AWS has already signed up a clutch of partners for the new service – the likes of Accenture, Deloitte, Rackspace and Capgemini can conduct EMP migrations now.

EMP is free, another signal that it is clearly intended to encourage those running Windows Server apps to use AWS instead of Azure.