Nasstar achieves prestigious AWS OLA partner status

28 November 2023      
Dark blue and green background with light green 'A' letter to the right

Nasstar is delighted to have achieved OLA partner status with AWS, making us one of only a handful of UK Partners able to deliver this engagement. This achievement enables us to help our customers produce directional business cases when considering the cloud or starting a migration proof of concept. 

Steven Sell, Director of Public Cloud Services at Nasstar, said: “As one of a select number of OLA partners in the UK, the assessment enables us to find the right AWS solution for our customers and help them understand the most cost-effective strategy for migrating workloads.

“In addition to unlocking cost savings, the OLA ensures a quick and successful migration, providing the visibility and knowledge to modernise legacy applications – ensuring our customers focus on innovation rather than keeping the lights on.” 

What is OLA? 

OLA is an acronym for ‘Optimisation and Licensing Assessment’. This assessment enables AWS users to assess and optimise their on-premises and cloud environments based on actual resources, utilization and third-party licensing. It is designed to help organisations make informed decisions concerning their cloud journey.  

During an OLA, our experts analyse and review licensing data to model cost and optimisation scenarios. Following this, we will deliver a comprehensive report that models your deployment options based on your personal circumstances to help you discover potential cost savings.  

The OLA programme is already delivering positive results for AWS customers. On average, AWS data identified 36% savings in compute costs and 49% in licensing costs by right-sizing customers’ environments to the AWS cloud. 

What does this achievement mean for Nasstar? 

OLA partner status is a prestigious accreditation, with only a small number of UK AWS Partners having been onboarded to the programme so far. This sets us apart from other AWS Partners, highlighting our breadth of expertise, as well as the trust and strong relationship we have with AWS. 

The new status means we can carry out OLAs for our customers that have a minimum of 50 servers. We will look at: 

  • Optimising the cloud infrastructure to reduce costs by running fewer instances in AWS due to the elasticity of the cloud. 
  • Rightsizing by identifying the best AWS instance size and type for each workload. 
  • Avoiding unnecessary licensing costs through modelling licensing scenarios, including license-included or BYOL instances. 

What does OLA mean for Nasstar customers? 

AWS created the OLA Programme to help businesses understand how their environment would look with AWS cloud, considering both infrastructure and licensing. The key benefits for our customers include: 

  • No cost – AWS will fund Nasstar, as an OLA partner, to carry out the assessment for you. 
  • No obligation – your business does not have to migrate to AWS after running the program, it simply gives you the opportunity to see how it looks and works before you make a decision. 
  • Potential cost savings – after an OLA, we can build a migration and licensing strategy that could help you deliver cost savings by transitioning to AWS. We can help you save on third party licensing costs, while enabling you to run your database resources efficiently. 

Most importantly, being an OLA partner will enable our customers to achieve significant cost savings. Cost optimisation has been ranked as the top cloud initiative for businesses for half a decade. However, many organisations do not have the time or resources to analyse their own situation – until now.

Book your Optimisation and Licensing Assessment 

If you have a minimum of 50 servers, whether you’re already an AWS user or not, book your free OLA assessment today.