2020 was certainly one for the history books. Of all the changes the pandemic and lockdown brought about, one of the most enduring impacts is in the way we work. Businesses across the world were forced to shut down their physical premises and each employee’s home became an extension of the workplace. This sudden change meant that companies that had for long been on the fence about revamping their software were forced to make quick decisions.
Revamping is not for just moving on-premise legacy systems to the cloud but it could also involve rehosting to another cloud provider or splitting your applications to a multi-cloud structure.
However, the one factor that has hindered businesses from making the leap has been the time and effort required to transition from an existing system. There are a number of ways to make this transition. Businesses can rebuild the platform from scratch, re-platform the application, and so on. But if speed and ease of transition are the most important factors, one method stands out: lift and shift migration.
What is Lift and Shift Migration?
Lift and shift migration require minimal changes to the existing code and applications. In this approach, data is simply ‘lifted’ from the legacy system and ‘shifted’ to the cloud. Imagine a crane lifting a trailer from one lot and setting it down on another. That’s, in a very simplified nutshell, how lift and shift works. There are no changes to the existing workflows, accesses, authentication processes and data sets. The obvious benefit of this technique is that businesses will not have to redevelop their applications or rewrite codes. This will enable them to make the transition to the cloud faster and with minimum downtime.
Why should you consider the lift and shift approach?
If you are evaluating the best options for your transition to the cloud, the lift and shift cloud migration technique could offer several key benefits.
Should you deploy the lift and shift cloud method?
The lift and shift technique is quick and effective, but it might not be the right method for every business. Here are three questions to ask yourself before leveraging this technique.
If you’re considering a migration to the cloud environment and have questions on which approach will work best for your business processes, speak to our team of experts.
