Amazon Web Services Inc. today announced the general availability of its Migration Acceleration Program for Windows, which was released in preview at AWS re:Invent 2019 last December.

AWS MAP for Windows is a service that’s meant to help customers execute large-scale migrations of Windows-based workloads to AWS. It offers access to services such as prescriptive guidance, consulting with AWS experts and tools, training and service credits to reduce the risks associated with switching to the cloud.

In addition, AWS MAP for Windows is designed to help customers reduce their licensing costs through the adoption of cloud-native and open-source technologies.

AWS Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy criticized Microsoft for its licensing practices at the time the service was announced, saying they limit the ways in which businesses are able to deploy Windows and SQL Server in the cloud.

There are three steps involved with AWS MAP for Windows, the first of which involves a migration readiness assessment. The second is a mobilization phase that aims to fix any problems identified during the initial assessment, while the third phase is the actual migration that’s carried out with the help of Amazon’s ProServe team and Amazon Partner Network companies.

Amazon seems to think the new service will be popular, citing figures from International Data Corp. that show AWS hosts almost twice as many Windows Server instances as Microsoft’s Azure cloud.

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