The AWS Summit in Hamburg made clear again what is coming next for German industry in cloud, AI and data sovereignty. Talking to industrial decision-makers, three questions keep coming back — and they decide whether a migration holds or peters out.
“Migration sounds good — but where do we start?”
Not with the technology, but with taking stock. Which workloads carry the business? Which are tightly coupled, which can be moved in isolation? A migration that holds begins with an honest reading of the application landscape and an order of work that starts with the least risk — not with the largest system.
“How do we stay compliant and sovereign on AWS?”
In German industry, data sovereignty is not a nice-to-have. It is decided at architecture level: region, encryption, access control and traceability belong in the foundation, not in a review bolted on afterwards. Address compliance only after the migration and you build twice.
“Do costs really fall — or do they just move?”
Both are possible. A migration that only shifts what previously ran in the data centre merely moves the cost. A migration that aligns the architecture with actual demand — elastic scaling, right-sized instance types, idle capacity switched off — reduces it. The difference is not the cloud; it is how the architecture is cut.
The right architecture first
Each of these questions has a clear answer — provided you start with the right architecture. Anyone planning an AWS migration, or looking to optimise workloads already migrated, should begin with the cut of the architecture rather than with the technology.