Anything that eases the migration of apps to the cloud isn't something anybody is going to complain about. And plenty of cloud companies are trying to make it easier for their partners to do so. The latest news of this sort comes from AppZero, which has released a self-service application migration tool for Amazon (AWS) Web Services.

AppZero Service Provider edition for AWS (AppZero SP/AWS) takes the vendor's application migration tool and enables system integrators and IT operations professionals to move server applications onto AWS "simply, fast, and without code changes—at the push of a button at no cost."

Easy and free. Remember a time in the software industry when that was a reason to be highly skeptical? It doesn't seem like all that many years ago. But of course, now there are a good number of tools that fit those criteria and are actually worth more than their price.

The AppZero offering was designed to be a self-service migration tool that automates the migration of existing Windows applications. According to the company, the service separates an app from the OS and machine, copies it and then reinstalls it on AWS. All of this with a click of a button, AppZero promises.

"The complexity and cost of moving applications to the cloud has negatively impacted cloud adoption.  AppZero/AWS makes it fast and easy (not to mention no cost) to move enterprise server applications,  accelerating the ability to move to the cloud," said Greg O'Connor, CEO of AppZero, in a prepared statement.

Forget free, though. What seems most promising about this service is its ability to automatically discover installed applications without the need to install code or agents on the source machine. Instead, the SaaS offering is meant to automate and simplify the migration process to AWS. AppZero noted in its announcement that its ability to move only the application into the cloud saves time, reduces bandwidth and allows for a systematic "gold" image construction of the cloud environment.

If it works as promised, it could be a strong tool in the kit of any IT pro.