01
Lock-In Audit
Map every workload by realistic portability. Some are trivial to move (containerized, cloud-agnostic). Others are deeply locked-in (RDS, DynamoDB, Lambda). We grade each.
Service · Negotiation Advisory
Multi-Cloud Leverage for AWS Negotiations.
Azure and GCP will quote you. AWS knows. We run parallel hyperscaler negotiations so your AWS EDP is priced against a credible alternative, not against itself. Average uplift: 8-18 EDP discount points.
$2.4B+
AWS spend reviewed
500+
Engagements
38%
Average reduction
$340M+
Client savings
The Premise
AWS prices to the credible alternative.
AWS account teams are measured on retention and growth. When the account team believes you have a real alternative — backed by an actual proposal from Microsoft or Google — the conversation changes. Discount tiers move. Flex provisions appear. Migration credits stop being theoretical. The work is in making the alternative credible, then deploying it without burning the relationship.
Most customers fail at this in one of two ways. They either threaten loudly without a real proposal in hand — AWS calls the bluff and the threat costs you discount. Or they get a real proposal but mishandle the disclosure — sharing too much, too early, or to the wrong person at AWS. We have run parallel hyperscaler negotiations across $2.4B+ in reviewed AWS spend; this is the playbook.
Why this works on AWS specifically
AWS holds the largest market share, which means the AWS account team has the most to lose. Microsoft and Google account teams will aggressively price net-new workloads to gain footprint. They will write credits, fund POCs, and discount three-year commits well below their own list. Their pricing becomes the floor against which your AWS EDP is benchmarked. Even if you never move a workload, the existence of the proposal moves AWS.
This dynamic is most pronounced in three areas: data egress (where Azure and GCP have published egress reductions), generative AI inference (where pricing is being reset weekly), and analytics warehousing (where Snowflake-on-Azure and BigQuery are direct AWS Redshift alternatives). We start engagements by identifying the two or three workloads where a credible move would hurt AWS most.
What we will not do
We will not fabricate fake proposals. We will not coach you to lie to AWS about your migration intent. We will not damage your AWS account-team relationship. Lies get exposed within one negotiation cycle, the discount erodes the next year, and the account team you need on your side becomes hostile. Real leverage requires real alternatives — that is the entire premise.
Our Approach
How a parallel hyperscaler engagement runs.
02
Target Workloads
Identify the two to four workloads that AWS will fight hardest to retain. These are usually the largest, the highest-margin, or the most reference-worthy.
03
Azure & GCP Briefings
We brief Microsoft and Google account teams under NDA. Symmetric brief, identical workload definition, identical timeline. Apples to apples.
04
Proposal Normalization
Microsoft, Google, and AWS price differently. We normalize three-year TCO including support, networking, and committed-use discounts. Real apples.
05
Disclosure Strategy
What does AWS see? When? Coached disclosure to the AWS executive sponsor — not the account exec — at the moment of maximum negotiating leverage.
06
EDP Re-Tier
The reformed AWS EDP. Better tiers, better flex, better minimums, often migration credits funded by AWS to retain the workload. Always documented.
Frequently Asked
Questions we get on multi-cloud leverage.
01Do we actually have to move workloads?+
No. In the majority of our engagements, the threat is sufficient. AWS responds to credible competition with improved EDP terms, retention credits, and flex provisions. The migration option is real, but it usually goes unexercised. Customers who want to move some workloads anyway use the negotiation to fund the migration.
02Will the AWS account team retaliate?+
No, if done professionally. AWS account teams expect competitive pressure from sophisticated customers. They prefer a transparent competitive process over a covert one. We coach disclosure so the AWS account team is informed, not blindsided. Properly handled, the relationship improves after the negotiation, not before.
03What if our workloads are too AWS-native to move?+
Almost no workload is unmovable. We map lock-in honestly — Lambda functions and DynamoDB are hard; EC2, Kubernetes, S3, and Postgres workloads are not. We focus competitive leverage on the portable workloads. The locked-in workloads still benefit from the EDP uplift the portable ones generate.
04Does this work for sub-$1M AWS spend?+
Less effectively. Multi-cloud leverage compounds with EDP commit size. Customers below $1M annual AWS spend usually get more value from compute spend negotiation, savings plans optimization, and support tier negotiation. We will tell you straight if multi-cloud leverage is not the right lever for your spend profile.
05How long does this take?+
10-16 weeks end-to-end. The first four weeks are the lock-in audit and Azure/GCP briefings. The next six are proposal normalization and disclosure. The final four are EDP re-tier negotiation with AWS. The work runs in parallel with — not in place of — your existing EDP renewal timeline.
Make your AWS account team
fight to keep you.
$2.4B+ in reviewed AWS spend. 500+ engagements. 38% average reduction. Multi-cloud leverage works because it is real. We build the alternative; you keep the choice.