A leading ANZ financial services firm completes its VMware exit in half the time
How OneByZero used AWS Transform and AWS MGN to migrate 71 virtual machines and 40 business-critical applications to AWS in 11 weeks, with minimal downtime.
Built on AWS Transform and AWS Application Migration Service (MGN)
11 wks
end-to-end delivery, versus 24 weeks for a traditional approach
71 / 40
VMs migrated and validated, all 40 applications live
28%
lower post-migration costs through rightsizing and Reserved Instances
Overview
About the customer
The client is a leading financial services organisation in Australia and New Zealand, managing complex workloads across a broad portfolio of applications and services. As part of a strategic infrastructure modernisation initiative, the client undertook a full VMware exit, migrating its on-premises virtual machine estate to AWS to eliminate licence costs, reduce operational complexity, and future-proof its cloud architecture.
The challenge
Migrating a complex VM estate under time and cost pressure
The client faced a hard deadline driven by rising VMware licence costs and a strategic decision to exit on-premises infrastructure entirely. With no complete CMDB and zero tolerance for business-hours downtime, the migration carried four critical pressure points.
01
Rising VMware licence costs
A hard deadline driven by escalating licence costs and a strategic decision to exit on-premises VMware infrastructure entirely.
02
A complex, mixed estate
71 virtual machines running 40 business-critical applications across a mixed environment, demanding careful wave planning.
03
No complete CMDB
Missing configuration data made dependency mapping and migration sequencing particularly difficult to plan with confidence.
04
Zero business-hours downtime
Any downtime during business hours was unacceptable, so every cutover had to execute without risk to live services.
The solution
AWS Transform + AWS MGN, orchestrated by OBZ
OneByZero deployed a two-phase migration approach built entirely on AWS-native tooling, combining AWS Transform for AI-powered discovery and planning with AWS MGN (Application Migration Service) for automated execution and cutover.
#Phase 01 · Weeks 1–2
Discovery
AWS Transform's AI-powered migration agent auto-discovered the full on-premises environment.
- Scanned all 71 VMs across CPU, RAM, OS, storage, network, and tags
- Automated dependency mapping identified 200+ dependencies
- No single manual interview required, resolving the missing-CMDB challenge
#Phase 02 · Planning
Wave planning
Migration plans were generated automatically and risk-tiered, ready for same-day review.
- Wave-based plans risk-tiered by dependency safety
- OBZ's runbook library covered 38 of 40 workload types
- Stakeholder sign-off completed in a single meeting
#Phase 03 · Weeks 3–11
Migration execution
AWS MGN provided continuous block-level replication across all 71 VMs, eliminating manual cutover risk.
- Automated cutover orchestration with post-migration validation at scale
- Downtime kept minimal during business hours
- All 71 VMs migrated and validated; all 40 applications confirmed live
AWS services used
An AWS-native migration stack
The entire migration ran on AWS-native services, removing the spreadsheet-driven manual effort that slows traditional VMware exits and keeping discovery, execution, and cost optimisation in one toolchain.
AWS Transform
AI-powered migration agent that auto-discovers on-premises environments, maps dependencies automatically, and generates risk-tiered wave plans, eliminating manual spreadsheet work.
AWS MGN
Application Migration Service providing continuous block-level replication, automated cutover orchestration, post-migration validation, and minimal-downtime execution at scale.
AWS Cost Tools
Rightsizing recommendations and Reserved Instance planning applied from day one, delivering 28% lower post-migration running costs and eliminating dual-environment overhead ahead of schedule.
Delivered by OneByZero, an AWS partner, using AWS-native migration tooling end to end.
Outcome
A modern AWS foundation, delivered early
11 wks
to full VMware exit, vs 24 weeks traditional
71 / 40
VMs migrated, all 40 applications live
28%
lower post-migration running costs
The full VMware exit was completed in 11 weeks, half the time a traditional migration approach would have required. All 71 virtual machines were migrated successfully and all 40 business applications went live with minimal downtime during business hours.
- Full VMware exit completed in 11 weeks, half the traditional timeline
- All 71 virtual machines migrated and validated successfully
- All 40 business applications live with minimal business-hours downtime
- Post-migration running costs 28% lower than the pre-migration baseline
- Dual-environment running costs eliminated ahead of schedule
- Engineering teams freed to focus on higher-value cloud-native work
About OneByZero
OneByZero is a frontier Systems Integrator specialising in AI Coworker design, build, and deployment for regulated enterprises across financial services, telecommunications, and retail. We operate across ASEAN, India, ANZ, and Japan, with a presence in the United States, combining domain expertise in regulated industries with deep AI engineering capability.
HQ Singapore · Tech HQ USA · Australia · India · Indonesia · Malaysia · Philippines · Thailand · Vietnam
