A lift and shift migration approach is the best option for a company that needs to move rapidly to a cloud environment. A lift and shift migration, also known as rehosting, involves moving an existing application and its associated data to a cloud platform without changing the app's architecture1. This approach is suitable for applications that are compatible with the cloud provider's infrastructure and do not require significant modifications or optimizations to run in the cloud2. A lift and shift migration can offer the following benefits for a company that needs to move quickly to the cloud34:
Speed and simplicity: A lift and shift migration can be done faster and easier than other migration approaches that involve refactoring, replatforming, rebuilding, or replacing the application. A lift and shift migration can leverage automated tools and processes to reduce the manual effort and complexity involved in the migration. A lift and shift migration can also minimize the risk of errors, bugs, or compatibility issues that may arise from changing the application code or configuration.
Cost savings: A lift and shift migration can help a company save costs by avoiding the expenses of maintaining or renewing the data center contract, hardware, software, or licenses. A lift and shift migration can also help a company take advantage of the pay-as-you-go pricing model and the scalability and elasticity features of the cloud, which can reduce the operational and capital expenditures. A lift and shift migration can also enable a company to benefit from the security, reliability, and performance enhancements offered by the cloud provider.
Future flexibility: A lift and shift migration can help a company move to the cloud without disrupting the existing business operations or workflows. A lift and shift migration can also provide a foundation for future cloud optimization or modernization initiatives, such as refactoring, replatforming, rebuilding, or replacing the application to leverage the native cloud services and features. A lift and shift migration can also allow a company to adopt a hybrid or multicloud strategy, which can increase the availability, resilience, and agility of the application.