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AWS Funding ProgrammesAWS will often co-fund the work. Most customers never ask.
Migration assessments, proofs of concept and modernisation projects can attract AWS investment. The nomination has to come through a partner — so we prepare and submit it, and the funding reduces what you pay us.
What exists, and what each one is for
Programme names, criteria and amounts are set by AWS and change over time. This is how they typically work in Australia — we confirm current terms with your AWS account team before you plan around any of it.
Migration Acceleration Program (MAP)
The largest and most structured. Designed for migrations of meaningful scale, delivered in the assess / mobilise / migrate phases AWS defines.
- Assessment phase funding, often covering a substantial share of the discovery cost
- Mobilise phase funding tied to defined deliverables
- Migration phase credits, usually calculated against migrated workload spend
- Requires a committed migration plan and reported outcomes
Best fit: data centre exits, large VMware estates, and multi-wave programmes with a business case already written.
Proof of concept funding
Smaller, faster and far less paperwork. Intended to de-risk a specific technical decision before you commit budget to it.
- Credits to cover the AWS consumption of the proof itself
- Sometimes partner delivery funding alongside
- Needs a defined success criterion, not "we want to try Kubernetes"
- Turnaround measured in weeks rather than months
Best fit: evaluating Aurora against your workload, testing a Bedrock use case, or validating a landing zone design.
Modernisation & workload-specific
AWS runs targeted programmes for particular moves — commercial databases to open source, Windows workload modernisation, mainframe, SAP and analytics platform migration.
- Assessment funding specific to the workload type
- Licence-cost modelling support
- Availability varies by year and by region
Best fit: Oracle or SQL Server estates, and Windows Server fleets where licensing dominates the economics.
Well-Architected remediation
Credits are sometimes available against remediation work identified in a formal Well-Architected review — which is one practical reason to have the review documented properly rather than informally.
- Tied to findings recorded in the AWS Well-Architected Tool
- Applied against the AWS consumption of the remediation
- Modest amounts, but the review itself is free
Best fit: customers who have just completed our free review and want to act on it.
What we do, and what you have to do
Your involvement is roughly two hours. Ours is considerably more, and it is included — we do not charge for preparing a nomination.
- Step 1
Qualification call
Thirty minutes. We establish workload scope, timeline and rough spend, and give you an honest read on likelihood before anyone invests effort.
- Step 2
Nomination prepared
We write it — scope, business case, projected AWS consumption, delivery plan and outcome measures. You review and confirm the numbers are ones you will stand behind.
- Step 3
Submission & AWS review
Submitted through Partner Central and reviewed by AWS. Typically two to six weeks depending on programme and size. We chase it; you do not.
- Step 4
Delivery & reporting
Funded work is delivered against the agreed milestones. We handle outcome reporting back to AWS, which is a condition of most programmes and a common reason funding is later withheld.
What funding is not
- Not guaranteed. AWS assesses each nomination against current criteria and budget. A partner who promises funding before submission is guessing.
- Not a discount on your bill. It generally arrives as credits or as partner delivery funding against defined work — not as a reduction in your run-rate.
- Not free money with no obligations. Most programmes require outcome reporting and a genuine migration. Nominating work you do not intend to do damages the relationship for everyone.
- Not a reason to migrate. If the business case only works with funding, the business case does not work. We will say so.
Why partners are the route
AWS runs most investment programmes through partners because delivery accountability sits somewhere. That does mean you need a partner engaged to access them — a genuine structural advantage of working with one, and one of the few that is concrete rather than marketing.
It also means the funding is tied to a delivery plan. If you would rather do the work in-house, the honest answer is that most of these programmes will not be available to you, and we would rather tell you that than pretend otherwise.
Find out in thirty minutes
Tell us the workload and the timeline. We will give you an honest read on eligibility before either of us spends real effort.