What Does William Bring?
I start by listening to your senior stakeholders. What's your actual pain? What are your real needs? What mission and values drive your organization?
From there, I conduct a deep discovery across your organization. Not just the steering committee—I talk to your ops teams, your infrastructure people, your compliance experts, your finance teams. I understand your organizational culture and where the technical risks actually live. Most migration failures aren't technical. They're organizational. And the person closest to the work often sees risks and constraints that need to shape how we approach change.
My discovery doesn't just answer "what needs to migrate." It answers "how does change management need to be shaped for the mobilize phase?" I validate the steering committee's strategy against organizational reality. I've delivered $100M+ programs at Genentech and Roche. I've seen migrations where the technology worked perfectly and the organization wasn't ready. I know what it takes to bring the entire organization along, not just move the systems.
That's white-glove delivery. You get senior leadership alignment, organizational readiness, and a mobilization strategy built on actual conditions—not assumptions.
The Assessment Phase: Where It Starts
Deep Dive Into What's Actually Broken
Assessment isn't a spreadsheet exercise. It's a listening campaign.
I use AWS Cloud Adoption Readiness Assessment (CARA) as the framework, but the real work is the conversations. I talk to your ops teams about daily pain points. I ask your infrastructure people what keeps them up at night. I understand from your compliance team where the real risks live. I ask your finance team whether this migration actually solves a business problem or just moves the cost around.
After 20 years at Genentech and Roche managing regulated systems, I know that "the organization isn't ready" actually means: leadership doesn't understand the real scope of change, teams don't have the skills, the handoff points between teams have never been explicit, and nobody's actually said what success looks like.
I find those gaps before they become migration failures.
Tools Deployed in Service of Your Real Problems
I don't pick AWS tools because they're shiny. I pick them because they solve the problems we discovered in the deep dive.
AWS Migration Evaluator — shows you the true cost of staying versus moving, and whether the business case is actually sound. No assumptions.
AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) — structures the readiness assessment across business, people, governance, and technology. It's not about checking boxes. It's about ensuring every dimension is actually ready before you move.
AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) — funding and partner resources. If your organization needs external expertise, MAP helps you bring in the right hands without derailing your budget.
AWS Application Migration Service (MGN) — automated, safe migration. You minimize downtime and technical risk because the methodology has been battle-tested across thousands of migrations.
AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) — continuous data synchronization. Your database doesn't go dark. Your team doesn't have to hold their breath.
AWS WAF & Security Tooling — regulated environments require guardrails. I've managed FDA-scrutinized systems where zero-downtime deployment meant the controls had to be airtight. AWS provides them.
The 7 R's: Built on What You Actually Know
Not every workload migrates the same way. And not every decision should be made by a technical team alone.
The 7 R's framework doesn't work as a matrix exercise. It works when you understand the actual constraints: what your ops team can support, where compliance gets tight, which systems your business can't afford to stumble on, where you have skill gaps that cloud can't fix.
Rehost (Lift & Shift) — for workloads where your team can support them as-is. Speed matters more than optimization.
Replatform (Lift, Tinker & Shift) — minimal optimization. Your team knows this stack. Cloud means reduced toil, not retraining.
Refactor (Re-architect) — only if you have the capacity and the payoff justifies the risk. This is where teams get stuck.
Repurchase (Switch to SaaS) — often solves problems you didn't know you had. Reduces operational burden. Shifts risk to the vendor, which is sometimes the right call.
Rearchitect — rebuild from ground up. Only for mission-critical systems where the business case is undeniable and your team has the bandwidth.
Retire — decommission systems. After deep dive conversations, this is often where the biggest savings live. You can shut down systems nobody's actually using.
Retain — keep on-premises. Not every workload belongs in the cloud. If the cost, risk, or complexity exceeds the benefit, that's the right answer.
The choice comes from understanding your organization's actual readiness, not from a playbook.
When AI Comes Into Your Migrated Systems
Regulated environments deploying AI need governance that actually works—not policy documents that look good in audits.
I bring the AIM Framework—Awareness, Infrastructure, Mechanisms. But the real work is ensuring your teams understand what they're actually responsible for. That AI governance isn't a gate that slows you down. That controls are built into the lanes where work happens, not layered on top as bureaucracy.
At Roche, I learned that governance works when the people closest to the work understand why it matters. Not because a policy said so. Because they got how risk actually flows through the system.
Migrations that integrate AI into your cloud infrastructure need that discipline built in from day one. Not retrofitted after deployment. Not checked as a compliance box. Built as part of how you operate.
The Three Phases
After assessment establishes organizational readiness, three detailed phases follow:
Assess Regulated Workloads for AWS
GxP validation lens, rapid discovery, TCO analysis, migration readiness assessment, and stakeholder alignment—the technical foundation built on organizational readiness.
Mobilize Regulated Workloads for AWS
Organizational change management, skills training, governance structure, landing zone design, and operational model definition—where readiness becomes execution.
Migrate & Modernize Regulated Workloads for AWS
Controlled wave-based execution, continuous validation, cost optimization, and post-migration analysis—where discipline meets delivery.
Why This Matters
Migrations that succeed aren't the ones with the best technology decisions. They're the ones where senior leadership and the entire organization are aligned on what success means. Where the steering committee's strategy is validated against organizational reality. Where change is managed with intention.
That's white-glove delivery. Senior stakeholders know their strategy was tested. Your team knows they'll be supported. And you can run the system confidently after I leave.