As a leading provider of migration services, Align understands that selecting the right migration strategy is critical because it’s not a “one-size-fits-all” approach—organizations must consider migration requirements, existing infrastructure, and future state goals. In this blog, the experts at Align draw on decades of experience and dive into the commonly employed migration strategies (known in the industry as the 6 R’s) so you can make informed choices for your next data center migration.
Rehost (Lift and Shift)
The first migration strategy is the rehosting approach. At Align, we refer to it as the "lift and shift" method.
This migration strategy entails relocating your infrastructure from on-premises to the cloud or another on-premises data center with minimal or no modifications to the applications or workloads. In some cases, this strategy could even entail physically moving hardware from one location to another to be turned up at the new location.
By leveraging infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings from cloud providers, organizations can replicate their on-premises setup in the cloud, allowing applications to run in a cloud-hosted environment. The rehosting strategy is often seen as a quick and relatively straightforward way to migrate to the cloud.
Benefits at a glance:
- Little to no disruption to ongoing operations
- Can be completed under tight timelines
- Potential costs savings by retiring on-prem hardware and leveraging the cloud’s pay-as-you-go pricing model
- Requires less technical resources to complete migration
- Allows for future optimizations within the cloud environment
Align's Take:
It’s important to note the rehosting strategy may not fully capitalize on the cloud's native features and capabilities. This can potentially limit the optimization and scalability benefits the cloud can offer. And without refactoring or rearchitecting applications specifically for the cloud, organizations may miss opportunities to enhance performance and cost-effectiveness.
Replatform
Replatforming, also known as the "lift-tinker-and-shift" approach, involves transitioning applications to the cloud environment while introducing optimizations that leverage cloud provider services. This strategy entails making modest adjustments to the application code and architecture to take advantage of cloud-native features and capabilities.
Although more complex than a straightforward "lift and shift" migration, replatforming still allows organizations to maintain the core functionality and architecture of their existing applications. This mitigates the risks associated with extensive rearchitecting efforts. Businesses should note that this approach may still leave organizations tied to legacy architectures and potentially limit their ability to fully embrace cloud-native paradigms.
Benefits at a glance:
- Improved scalability
- Enhanced performance
- Cost optimization
- Minimizes extent of code modifications required
- Ability to incorporate cloud-native services into applications
- Offloads operational burdens
- Reduces infrastructure management overhead
Align's Take:
Replatforming strikes a balance between cost-effective optimization and architectural continuity, making it an attractive option for businesses looking to gradually modernize their applications.
Repurchase
The repurchasing strategy, as the name implies, means transitioning from on-premises applications to cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions. This approach involves abandoning the existing applications and adopting a commercially available, cloud-native SaaS alternative that provides equivalent functionality.
Repurchasing is particularly beneficial when a suitable SaaS offering exists that aligns with the organization's requirements. It remains a viable option for organizations seeking to leverage modern, cloud-native solutions while also reducing IT overhead.
Benefits at a glance:
- Reduced maintenance and operational burdens associated with traditional on-premises software
- Automatic updates provided by SaaS solutions
- Scalability benefits inherent to cloud-based solutions
- Transfer of operational responsibilities to the SaaS vendor
- Reduced IT overhead and infrastructure management responsibilities
- Agility and cost-effectiveness of leveraging modern, cloud-native solutions
- Access to the latest features and innovations offered by leading SaaS providers
Align's Take:
By leveraging SaaS solutions, organizations can take advantage of the inherent benefits of the cloud, such as automatic updates, scalability, and the transfer of operational responsibilities to the vendor. It’s essential to recognize that the repurchasing strategy may require substantial efforts in process and data migration, as well as comprehensive user training to ensure a smooth transition to the new SaaS platform.
Refactoring
The refactoring approach involves a comprehensive re-architecting and re-coding of applications to fully leverage cloud-native services, architectures, and design patterns. This strategy goes beyond mere optimization by fundamentally rebuilding applications from the ground up to align with cloud computing principles and best practices.
Organizations can use Platform as a Service (PaaS) to modify their workloads to cloud architectures. By embracing cloud-native architectures, such as microservices, containerization, and serverless computing, organizations can unlock the full potential of the cloud.
While refactoring offers the most substantial benefits, it’s also the most resource-intensive and complex migration strategy. It requires a significant investment of development effort, architectural expertise, and careful planning to mitigate potential risks associated with extensive code changes.
Benefits at a glance:
- Full leverage of cloud-native services, architectures, and design patterns
- Alignment with cloud computing principles and best practices
- Unparalleled scalability through cloud-native architectures
- Enhanced performance
- Cost optimization
- Increased resilience
- Opportunity to future-proof applications
- Position for sustained competitive advantage in the cloud era
- Ability to embrace modern architectures like microservices, containerization, and serverless computing
Align's Take:
For organizations with the necessary resources, skills, and a long-term vision for cloud adoption, refactoring presents an opportunity to future-proof applications.
Retire
In certain scenarios, organizations may opt to retire legacy applications altogether and replace them with cloud-native solutions designed from the ground up for the cloud environment. This strategy is suitable when existing on-premises applications have become outdated, redundant, or no longer align with evolving business needs.
The retiring strategy is an attractive option for organizations seeking to comprehensively overhaul their application landscape, eliminate technical debt, and position themselves for long-term success. By embracing cloud-native solutions, businesses can future-proof their operations, reduce maintenance overhead, and benefit from continuous updates from cloud service providers.
Benefits at a glance:
- Ability to replace outdated, redundant, or misaligned legacy applications
- Simplify IT landscape and reduce technical debt
- Benefit from agility, scalability, and cost-efficiency of cloud computing
- Streamline operations
- Overhaul and future-proof application landscape
- Reduce maintenance overhead
- Continuous innovation and updates from cloud service providers
- Position for long-term success in the cloud era
- Eliminate technical debt
Align's Take:
While the retiring approach can be an effective way to modernize an organization's application portfolio and streamline operations, it may also require significant process changes and comprehensive user training to ensure a smooth transition to the new cloud-native solutions. Organizations must carefully evaluate the potential impact on business processes, data migration requirements, and the need for user adoption and change management.
Retain
In certain circumstances, it may not be feasible or cost-effective to migrate specific applications or data sets to the public cloud environment. In such cases, organizations may opt to keep these resources on-premises or within a private cloud infrastructure. This strategy can be particularly beneficial for applications that are subject to stringent regulatory or compliance requirements.
By retaining critical applications and data on-premises or in a private cloud, organizations can maintain greater control over security, privacy, and compliance while still leveraging the benefits of cloud computing for other workloads.
Benefits at a glance:
- Maintain greater control over security, privacy, and compliance
- Suitable for applications subject to stringent regulatory requirements
- Allows keeping tightly coupled applications/systems on-premises
- Enables leveraging cloud computing benefits for other workloads
- Appropriate for legacy applications too complex/costly to migrate
- Viable option for organizations in highly regulated industries (finance, healthcare, government)
- Retains full control over on-premises infrastructure and data
Align's Take:
It’s important to note that this approach often results in a hybrid environment, where some resources reside in the cloud while others remain on-premises. This hybrid model can introduce additional complexity and management overhead, as organizations must ensure seamless integration and data synchronization between the different environments.
The Way Forward
As you embark on your cloud migration journey, it's crucial to gain a comprehensive understanding of your existing infrastructure and workloads so you choose the right migration strategy—or combination of strategies. Align's Current State Assessment provides an in-depth analysis, encompassing physical and logical inventories, as well as business intelligence insights tailored to your organization's unique needs–so you can make the most informed migration decisions. Take the first step towards a seamless migration by scheduling a Current State Assessment with Align today.
