Cloud migration is essential for organizations seeking agility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. However, meticulous planning and strategizing are crucial for every cloud journey, particularly when deciding whether to rehost, re-platform, or refactor.
This article will examine three migration strategies and offer valuable insights to assist your cloud migration journey.
- What is cloud migration and how cloud migration works?
- Overview of Rehosting, re-platforming, and Refactoring
- Choosing the right migration strategy
- Pros and Cons of Rehosting, Re-platforming, and Refactoring
What is Cloud migration?
Transferring an organization’s data, applications, and other business elements from their on-site computers or servers to the cloud or from one cloud environment to another is known as cloud migration. The term “cloud” refers to servers accessible via the internet and the software and databases running on them.
Cloud migration can provide numerous benefits, including greater scalability, more flexible cost structures, and improved performance and reliability.
How does Cloud migration work?
Cloud migration involves the process of transferring an organization’s digital assets, such as applications, data, and IT resources, from on-premises infrastructure to a cloud computing environment. It can be accomplished through various methods, such as rehosting (lift-and-shift), re-platforming, or refactoring, each with advantages and considerations.
Here’s a simplified overview of how cloud migration typically works:
- Assess and plan: Evaluate your existing infrastructure, define migration goals, and develop a comprehensive plan for transitioning to the cloud.
- Choose a cloud provider: Select a suitable cloud service provider based on factors such as pricing, services, and security, ensuring it aligns with your business needs.
- Design and prepare: Design the cloud architecture, establish connectivity, and prepare your applications and data for migration.
- Data migration: Securely transferring your data to the cloud environment, maintaining data integrity, and ensuring a smooth transition.
- Application migration: Move your applications to the cloud, either by rehosting, re-platforming, or refactoring, to optimize their performance in the cloud environment.
- Optimize and test: Fine-tune your cloud infrastructure, optimize performance, and thoroughly test the migrated applications to ensure they function as expected.
- Go live and monitor: Switch over to the cloud environment, redirect user traffic, shut down on-premises infrastructure, and continuously monitor and optimize your cloud resources for ongoing success.
Understanding the strategies: Rehosting, re-platforming, and refactoring
Before delving into which strategy suits you best, let’s start by understanding what rehosting, re-platforming, and refactoring mean.
- Rehosting or “lift-and-shift” involves moving applications and data to the cloud with minimal changes. This approach is typically faster and less resource-intensive, making it attractive for organizations looking for quick cloud migration.
- Re-platforming is making a few cloud optimizations to achieve tangible benefits without changing the core application architecture. This strategy is a middle ground, allowing you to tap into some of the cloud’s benefits without the complexity and cost of refactoring.
- Refactoring involves re-architecting and often re-coding an application to fully leverage cloud-native features. This method can be more time-consuming and costly, but it yields the most significant benefits in terms of performance, scalability, and cost optimization in the long run.
Choosing the right Cloud migration strategy
Once you have gained a solid understanding of what is a cloud migration strategy, it’s time to pick the one that works for your business. Choosing between rehosting, re-platforming, and refactoring requires careful consideration of various factors, including your organizational objectives, budget, time constraints, application architecture, and in-house skills.
- Rehosting (lift & shift): If your organization is facing a time-bound event like an upcoming data center contract expiration and aims for a quick migration with minimal disruption, rehosting might be the right choice. Additionally, if your applications are relatively simple, have a short lifespan, or lack the necessary in-house skills for more complex migrations, rehosting is worth considering.
- Re-platforming: An ideal strategy if your applications could benefit from a few cloud optimizations but don’t require full-scale refactoring. For instance, you might want to reduce management overhead by leveraging managed services, or your applications could benefit from improved performance or scalability available in a cloud environment.
- Refactoring: This could be the best choice when your application needs to leverage cloud-native features for maximum scalability, performance, or cost optimization. Furthermore, if your applications require substantial changes to meet evolving business requirements or if you’re building a competitive advantage through unique, custom-built software, refactoring is a wise choice.
