Lift and Shift or Modernize – Which Migration Strategy Should You Use to Migrate Your Analytics Apps to the Cloud?
The lift and shift cloud migration method may seem affordable and straightforward, but it is not always the right choice. It is important to weigh its pros and cons and also consider the long-term organizational goals before choosing it for your business.
Lift and shift vs. re-factoring
The simplest and most affordable way to move your analytics platforms to the cloud is through the the lift and shift approach—taking everything as they are and running them with cloud-based resources. Also known as rehosting, this migration approach involves zero to minimal architecture changes and little to no change to your data. It also allows you to avoid the costs involved in re-architecting entire applications.
However, while this migration strategy is quick and more cost-effective, it does not let you maximize all the benefits of shifting to a cloud platform. It simply lifts and shifts your infrastructure to the cloud, so any process bottlenecks or problems like slowness caused by complex business logic will persist even after migration. And, because this approach moves applications to a radically different environment without making any changes, legacy and on-premises projects might develop performance issues and latency post migration. This could very well lead to additional costs in the long-term.
In contrast, re-factoring or re-architecting is more expensive and is mostly used for critical applications that require modernization, such as when shifting from on-premise analytics to a real-time cloud-native solution. It is time-consuming and complex to execute, but it is worthwhile for enterprises who are serious about modernizing their application portfolio. Re-factoring enhances agility and shortens deployment time. This approach also provides your company with many services that are easy to use while facilitating collaborations for better data management and decision-making.
Re-factoring brings about many opportunities that go beyond cost savings, such as data modernization, agility, security, compliance, and scalability. Furthermore, modernization allows your business to leverage real-time processing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, DevOps, and more.
Which one is right for you?
No two migration journeys are alike. InfoCepts uses its proven expertise, technologies, and frameworks to narrow the choices relevant for your based on your requirements, build roadmaps, and deliver accelerated solutions.
We have designed modern cloud migration solutions that can help you consider all possible cloud transformation strategies and architecture options, analyze them against your primary objectives, and ultimately decide on the best fit.
About the author:
Ambar is a Marketing Consultant at InfoCepts and provides business development, marketing, and sales enablement expertise to help promote business growth and improve brand awareness. He has worked on numerous go-to-market strategies, external campaigns, global events, and has helped create content that genuinely adds value. Working closely with clients, Ambar has helped build innovative solutions across technology practices like data & analytics, cloud, AI, robotics, hyper-automation, and application modernization. He has more than 10 years of experience, holds a master’s degree in business administration, and a bachelor’s degree in engineering.