As companies become comfortable operating in the cloud, the model evolves from “lift and shift” triage to a more nuanced strategy that looks at maximizing operational simplicity and return on investment.

“What we’re starting to see around this modernization move is, ‘I want to start to utilize those higher-level services from [Amazon Web Services] and the cloud providers. I want to get a better return, I want to stop worrying about running infrastructure and hardware,’” said Scott Weber (pictured), director for cloud engineering and security hub at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

Weber spoke with Dave Vellante and David Nicholson, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed how companies can get more value out of the cloud. (* Disclosure below.)

Open, relational databases are on par with traditional DBs

Choosing to move away from proprietary databases and their software licensing fees is a major step that requires rewriting applications. But it brings huge returns. PwC has helped customers migrate from running .NET applications on top of a typical Microsoft Windows and SQL server stack to operating serverless, and typical returns are in the area of 60% to 80%, according to Weber.

“Software licensing costs for the [operating systems] and for the databases are huge,” Weber said. “If you can get somebody … to an open solution like [Amazon] Aurora Postgres or something like that, it’s a 90% ROI.”

Open relational database platforms have advanced to be on par in a lot of ways with traditional players such as Oracle and Microsoft, according to Weber. “So then you start to say, ‘Well, what am I gaining by paying and being sort of held hostage to these numbers?’ We definitely see customers making this transition,” he stated.

But why would a company that has an existing relationship with Microsoft choose the AWS cloud over Microsoft’s Azure? “The fact of the matter is the majority of your Windows workloads still run on top of AWS today,” Weber stated, arguing that “AWS has some pretty superior things in their underlying architecture.”

Although a deep discussion into cloud provider choice can spark a major philosophical discussion, Weber simplifies by saying “a lot of people are choosing AWS because they’re not just doing Microsoft workloads.”

Managed services platforms such as AWS’ Relational Database Service and Aurora free up resources to do the higher value things, according to Weber.

“The ROI of a DBA is not managing memory and disk and babysitting the servers, it’s helping the developers build better data models,” he said.

Don’t be afraid of Postgres, according to Weber. “It’s not really that different. It’s still data modeling,” he said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither PwC nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE