Shutterfly faced recurring capacity and scalability issues with its on-premises VMware vSphere environment, which housed over 2,000 virtual machines. The need to reduce operational costs, boost agility, and unlock innovation prompted the company to migrate to AWS, which had already been chosen as a strategic partner for its reliability and breadth of services.

Shutterfly utilized a wave planning approach, grouping applications and infrastructure into manageable phases based on dependencies and technical complexity. This method allowed them to break down the migration into smaller steps, reducing risk and improving efficiency. They also right-sized their environment, reducing their VM footprint from over 2,000 to 1,200.

Post-migration, Shutterfly achieved about a 25% reduction in operating costs through license avoidance and right-sizing. They also experienced enhanced reliability, with no high-severity incidents reported after the migration. The transition allowed for faster feature releases and the opportunity to leverage AWS's managed services for further innovation.