Why You Need a Landing Zone Before You Migrate

If you’re migrating to AWS or scaling your environment, there’s one step that can save you time, reduce risk, and increase efficiency: setting up a Landing Zone.

At Aligned Technology Group, we work with companies of all sizes from startups to public sector teams and we’ve seen firsthand how starting with a strong foundation can determine the long-term success of a cloud deployment. That’s exactly what a Landing Zone provides.

What Is an AWS Landing Zone?

An AWS Landing Zone is a pre-configured, secure, and scalable foundation for your AWS environment. Think of it like framing a house before moving in. It includes:

• Multi-account architecture based on AWS best practices

• Centralized identity and access management (IAM)

• Networking and security guardrails (e.g., VPCs, subnets, firewall rules)

• Logging, audit trails, and proactive monitoring frameworks

• Governance aligned with compliance frameworks (SOC 2, HIPAA, etc.)

It’s the toolkit that helps you start secure, stay compliant, and scale smart.

Why You Need a Landing Zone Before You Migrate

1. It Aligns with Every Phase of Your Migration

A migration project, whether from on-premise, a colocation provider, or another cloud should never start with reactivity. AWS Landing Zones align with migration phases by ensuring readiness and repeatability:

• Pre-Migration: Establish security controls, governance, and IAM policies

• During Migration: Use account segmentation for staging environments

• Post-Migration: Enable centralized logging, monitoring, and cost visibility

By building your landing zone before you migrate, you eliminate guesswork and future rework. You’ll avoid costly security gaps and save time by automating the heavy lifting.

2. Security First: A Non-Negotiable for the Cloud

Security is often treated as a box to check—after workloads are already in the cloud. That’s a mistake.

With a Landing Zone, security is embedded from the start:

• Centralized AWS Identity Center and IAM controls limit access to the principle of least privilege

• Encryption is enforced at rest and in transit

• Logging via AWS CloudTrail and Amazon GuardDuty is activated by default

• Security services like AWS Config, Security Hub, and Inspector are integrated

Starting a migration without these guardrails is like moving into a house with no locks or smoke detectors. A Landing Zone gives your team and your auditors peace of mind.

3. Multi-Account Architecture: Organize for Scale

Trying to manage everything from a single AWS account is like running an entire company from a single email inbox.

The AWS Landing Zone sets up organizational units (OUs) for workloads like:

• Production

• Development

• Security

• Shared Services

• Networking

Each account is isolated for blast-radius protection, yet managed under a single control plane via AWS Organizations. This not only improves security and billing transparency, but also aligns teams with a DevOps mindset, where environments can be independently deployed, monitored, and updated.

During migration, this structure helps map applications to the right environments, test in isolation, and transition workloads with zero risk of cross-contamination.

4. Proactive Monitoring and Governance from Day One

A critical but often overlooked part of cloud migration is visibility.

AWS Landing Zones activate centralized monitoring and logging from the beginning:

• Amazon CloudWatch for performance telemetry

• AWS CloudTrail for account activity

• AWS Config for configuration drift detection

• AWS Control Tower guardrails for compliance enforcement

With everything piped to a centralized log archive account, you’re never left wondering who did what, or when.

This also enables smoother compliance audits—something especially vital for industries with strict regulatory needs (finance, healthcare, government, etc.)

5. Landing Zones Eliminate Technical Debt Before It Happens

If you skip the landing zone and begin migrating “as-is,” you’ll likely face:

• Inconsistent IAM policies

• Ad-hoc network configurations

• Duplicate resource deployments

• Manual tagging chaos

• Security blind spots

This is a recipe for high cloud costs, compliance risks, and operational inefficiencies.

With a landing zone, you move forward with a plan not a patchwork. 

ATG’s Landing Zone Accelerator: Your Migration’s Best Ally

Aligned Technology Group offers a fast, tailored way to set up your landing zone. Our Landing Zone Accelerator includes:

• Deployment via AWS Control Tower and Terraform automation

• Custom guardrails based on your compliance needs

• Network architecture mapping and account segmentation

• Training and documentation for your internal team

Whether you’re planning a full lift-and-shift or a phased migration strategy, our approach ensures you’re ready before the first workload moves. 

Want to see what this looks like in practice? Check out how we helped a cybersecurity consulting firm transform their AWS environment with a Landing Zone.

Ready to Launch the Right Way?

Cloud adoption shouldn’t start with chaos. If you’re planning to migrate to AWS or scale your cloud presence, a landing zone is your launchpad.

Want to talk through the best path for your organization? Let’s chat