AWS to OCI migration

Executive summary: A cost-saving migration to OCI

01 Client

An insurance multi-agency operating in an EU country, specializing in life and non-life insurance, serving tens of thousands of clients through an extensive network of sales advisors.

02 The core challenge

The rising costs of the AWS environment started to add up for the client, with no clear optimization path in sight. Moreover, regulatory requirements regarding data sovereignty in the financial services sector necessitated that if a migration were to happen, the new cloud had to be a battle-tested and auditable technology with full support for GDPR, DORA, etc. OCI fit the bill perfectly.

03 Solution delivered

Pretius carried out a full migration of the Client's production environment from AWS to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). The project covered a licensing and TCO audit and a Zero-Downtime Migration.

Key outcomes:

50% cloud cost reduction:
A result achieved within 7 months from the start of the analysis to the production launch of the OCI environment.
Zero hours of unplanned downtime:
The migration was delivered using Oracle's Zero-Downtime Migration (ZDM) tooling — the Client's mission-critical business system remained available to advisors throughout the entire switchover.

Full regulatory compliance from day one:
The OCI architecture was designed to align with DORA, the national financial regulator's requirements, GDPR, and data sovereignty requirements, with complete documentation ready for regulatory audit.
Elimination of Oracle's 2:1 licensing penalty:
Moving away from Oracle's licensing policy applicable on AWS (two processor licenses per physical core) to the 1:1 model available on OCI, combined with BYOL.

Client background

The Client is a leading insurance multi-agency in its country, offering a wide range of life and non-life insurance products.

The company relies on an extensive network of sales advisors serving clients nationwide. A previous project delivered by Pretius became the operational heart of the organization, used daily by several hundred advisors. As the scale of system usage grew, and new EU and national regulations on digital resilience came into force, the cloud infrastructure on which the system was running became an area requiring a strategic decision.

The business challenge: rising cloud costs and new regulatory requirements

After several years of operating on AWS infrastructure, the Client found the cloud's mounting costs to be a problem that hindered growth – and therefore required solving.

The primary business obstacles were:

Escalating costs with no optimization path:
AWS bills were growing faster than system load, and the internal IT team lacked the tools and a dedicated FinOps process to identify sources of waste. Over-provisioned compute instances, unused storage volumes, inter-availability-zone data transfer costs, and egress charges for retrieving data from the cloud all combined into a sum that could not be effectively reduced using existing methods.

Oracle's 2:1 licensing penalty on AWS:
The Client had never undergone a formal Oracle licensing audit. Oracle's licensing policy requires two processor licenses for every physical core when running Oracle Database on AWS and Azure — on OCI, that factor is 1:1. The scale of this exposure was unknown to the board and had never appeared in the original TCO model for the AWS migration.

DORA coming into force and tightening regulator requirements:
The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which entered into force in January 2025, imposed specific, enforceable requirements on cloud infrastructure for financial services entities: tested Disaster Recovery scenarios with documented RTO and RPO, in-depth third-party risk management, and incident detection and reporting within defined timeframes. The new infrastructure had to meet these requirements in full.

The solution provided by Pretius: cost-saving AWS-OCI migration

The Client needed a solution that would simultaneously reduce operational cloud costs, eliminate Oracle licensing exposure, and deliver an architecture ready for regulatory inspection from day one.

The company partnered with Pretius — an official Oracle Partner and one of the most experienced cloud migration teams in Central Europe — to deliver a comprehensive migration from AWS to OCI.

The comprehensive solution delivered by Pretius was built on several key pillars:

01 Cloud health check and TCO audit

The starting point was a fixed-scope, two-week audit during which the Pretius team analyzed the Client's complete Oracle license estate, mapped it against the current AWS topology, and built a five-year TCO model comparing OCI, AWS, and Azure based on the actual workload profile. The audit revealed the full scale of the 2:1 licensing exposure and specific BYOL opportunities on OCI.

02 OCI architecture

Pretius designed the OCI environment from the ground up: tenancy structure, compartment hierarchy, IAM policies, VCN topology, FastConnect connectivity, and the Oracle Database System configuration matched to the workload profile of the Client's core business system. The high availability and Disaster Recovery architecture was built on Oracle Data Guard with cross-region replication and automatic failover, configured against the specific RTO/RPO requirements stemming from DORA.

03 Adherence to regulatory compliance

The standard configuration included Maximum Security Zones blocking the creation of resources that violate the defined security policy, Oracle Vault for encryption key management, private FastConnect connectivity, Cloud Guard for continuous security monitoring, and audit logging configured to provide evidence for regulatory inspections. The environment was deployed in EU Sovereign Cloud regions, guaranteeing verifiable physical data isolation and access by EU-only personnel.

04 Zero-Downtime Migration (ZDM)

The migration of the production Oracle database was carried out using Oracle's native ZDM tooling. Data Guard replication maintained full synchronization between the AWS source and the OCI target until validation and switchover. The switchover operation involved seconds of connection interruption, not hours of unavailability. The migration also included a tested rollback procedure executable within minutes.

05 DR testing and continuous monitoring

After handover to production, Pretius remained responsible for 24/7 monitoring using Oracle Observability and Management, database performance management (AWR, execution plan management, wait event investigation), patch management, RMAN backups with tested recovery, and annual Disaster Recovery testing with documented results prepared in the format required by DORA and the national financial regulator.

Measured outcomes and business impact

The migration transformed the Client's cloud infrastructure from a difficult-to-control cost center into an optimized, regulation-compliant environment ready to support the company's continued growth. Moreover, the implementation of the new OCI architecture delivered tangible financial and operational benefits.

Foundational technical and operational improvements

50% cloud cost reduction:
The result was achieved by eliminating the 2:1 licensing penalty, fully exploiting BYOL on OCI, right-sizing compute instances to OCI's architecture, and eliminating egress charges.
Zero hours of unplanned downtime:
The mission-critical business system, used daily by several hundred advisors, remained available throughout the entire migration.
7 months from audit to outcome:
Seven months passed from the first day of the Cloud Health Check to the production launch of the OCI environment.

Strategic and commercial value

Eliminated Oracle licensing exposure:
Moving from a 2:1 to a 1:1 factor and fully exploiting BYOL eliminated the annual, compounding financial risk associated with Oracle's licensing policy on AWS.
Scalable foundation for further growth:
The OCI environment with autoscaling at the OKE layer and native Oracle Database support prepares the Client to grow its business without a linear increase in cloud costs.

Conclusion

This case study demonstrates how a well-designed cloud migration can solve a cost and licensing problem, without incurring regulatory challenges. By partnering with Pretius, the Client replaced a growing, hard-to-control AWS bill with a predictable, optimized environment on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure — without disrupting operational continuity, and with a complete package of regulatory documentation included. The project is an example of a strategic infrastructure investment that simultaneously reduces costs, strengthens digital resilience, and keeps the business protected from regulatory risk.

Inquire about our OCI migration services

If your organization runs Oracle Database workloads on AWS or Azure and has never undergone a formal licensing audit, your exposure to the 2:1 penalty is typically larger than expected. Contact us to find out how our Cloud Health Check — fixed scope, no obligation — can help your CFO and CIO make an informed platform decision.

AWS to OCI migration: 50% cloud cost reduction in 7 months

Company

Country

Industry

System

Executive summary: A cost-saving migration to OCI

01

Client

02

The core challenge

03

Solution delivered

Key outcomes:

Client background

The Client is a leading insurance multi-agency in its country, offering a wide range of life and non-life insurance products.

The business challenge: rising cloud costs and new regulatory requirements

After several years of operating on AWS infrastructure, the Client found the cloud's mounting costs to be a problem that hindered growth – and therefore required solving.

The primary business obstacles were:

The solution provided by Pretius: cost-saving AWS-OCI migration

The comprehensive solution delivered by Pretius was built on several key pillars:

01

Cloud health check and TCO audit

02

OCI architecture

03

Adherence to regulatory compliance

04

Zero-Downtime Migration (ZDM)

05

DR testing and continuous monitoring

Measured outcomes and business impact

Foundational technical and operational improvements

Strategic and commercial value

Conclusion

Inquire about our OCI migration services

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