Moving to the Cloud – When to Migrate and When to Modernise?

With cloud migrations, the devil is usually in the detail, more on how to find out about that detail below.  But firstly, let’s consider the difference between migration and modernisation. 

Firstly, What's the Difference?

A cloud migration is simply the movement of services from a traditional data centre or computer room, to the cloud.  A migration is often called a “lift and shift”.  A simple migration leaves everything working as before, but hosted in the cloud.  Migrations can bring a number of benefits including:

1. No need to upgrade or replace on premise hardware
2. Reduced licensing costs
3. Improved compute power
4. Enhanced resilience, availability and backup. 

Modernisation is the second step which can happen once the service is in the cloud or during the migration to the cloud.  Modernisation simple means re-architecting a service to take advantage of services available in the cloud.  This could be as simply as replacing a traditional SQL database to a cloud native database – improving performance and reducing cost. 

Whilst the migration can deliver some immediate improvements, for example in performance, it’s the modernisation that delivers the real value.  Our projects indicate that almost all of the savings come from the modernisation phase.  This phase typically also delivers improved security and new innovations. 

5 Approaches to Moving to the Cloud

AWS refer to the five R’s of migration and modernisation: 

Rehost (Lift and Shift)

This involves moving applications to the cloud with minimal changes. It’s often the quickest method and is suitable for applications that don’t require significant modifications to run in the cloud.

Replatform (Lift, Tinker, and Shift)

This strategy involves making a few cloud optimisations to achieve some tangible benefits without changing the core architecture of the application. For example, you might switch to a managed database service.

Repurchase (Drop and Shop)

This involves moving to a different product, typically a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution. This is often used when the current application is outdated or when a better cloud-native solution is available.

Refactor / Re-architect

This strategy involves reimagining how the application is architected and developed, typically using cloud-native features. This is usually driven by a strong business need to add features, scale, or performance that would otherwise be difficult to achieve in the application’s existing environment.

Retire

This involves identifying applications that are no longer useful and can be turned off. This helps reduce the number of applications that need to be migrated, which can save time and resources.

Which is Right for My Business?

Which approach is best depends on the workload and the context.  Each service needs consideration and a plan developed.  Organisations often wish to understand how their services would be architected in the cloud and exactly what the costs and savings, if any, would be. 

StableLogic offer a complementary Cloud Viability Assessment, to preview a design your services in the cloud and to calculate the budget: