What are the 6 R’s of Cloud Migration Strategy?

Cloud computing is expected to replace traditional solutions for more than 45% of IT investment by 2024 in system infrastructure, application software, infrastructure software, and business process outsourcing. After all, since the beginning of the digital era, cloud computing has been one of the IT industry's most disruptive forces.

Worldwide, businesses have favored moving their routine tasks to the cloud to save costs and boost productivity. Significant increases in capital expenditures for IT and network services might result from on-site hardware and networking maintenance, particularly in the case of repairs and replacements.

Does your company need a cloud migration strategy?

You can increase cooperation and save money by migrating your data and apps to the cloud. Additionally, it ensures business continuity and offers the extra benefit of disaster management. It can be difficult and expensive if the migration process is mismanaged in a way that undermines the architecture of the product or company goals.

When deciding which apps and services to transfer and how the migration will affect licensing, services, and productivity throughout the company, businesses must adopt a comprehensive strategy.

How can you create a cloud migration strategy?

The process of creating a relocation strategy takes time. Nevertheless, what can be achieved in the migration environment, the interdependencies between the migrating pieces, and what will and won't migrate are often decided upon at the planning stage. In the sections, we'll vary each of them in more detail and help you decide which "R" is appropriate for your migration plan.

6 R’s of cloud migration strategy

1. Rehosting

Rehosting is sometimes referred to as lift and shift. It entails rehosting servers or apps after relocating them from their existing hosting environment, which is often on-premises, to public cloud infrastructure. A common technique for businesses just beginning their relocation journey is lift-and-shift.

While most rehosting can be automated using tools (like AWS VM Import/Export and CloudEndure Migration), some clients would rather handle it by hand while they figure out how to combine their old systems with the new cloud platform. There are many benefits of operating servers on pay-as-you-go scalable public cloud infrastructure. It is a low-risk migration strategy as a result.

2. Replatform

For the refactor or re-architect approach to work, the application should be redesigned to be cloud-native. This technique can be used to completely actualize cloud-native technologies such as load balancers, serverless containers, function-as-a-service, and microservices architecture.

When you move your digital assets from a serverless cloud architecture to a monolithic on-premise design, for instance, you can rework the assets. These redesigned programs offer a long-term return on investment and are scalable, flexible, and efficient.

This approach is more costly, time-consuming, and resource-intensive than the others, but it will be worthwhile in the long run. Other problems you can encounter are the complexity of the applications, the possibility of a significant business disruption, and a resource pool deficient in cloud-related expertise.

3. Refactor

For the refactor or re-architect approach to work, the application must be completely redesigned to be cloud-native. This technique can be used to completely actualize cloud-native technologies such as load balancers, serverless containers, function-as-a-service, and microservices architecture.

When you move your digital assets from a serverless cloud architecture to a monolithic on-premise design. For instance, you can rework the assets. These redesigned programs offer a long-term return on investment and are scalable, flexible, and efficient.

4. Repurchase

Repurchase, also referred to as the "drop and shop" strategy, substitutes vendor-packaged cloud-native software for on-premise software. Usually, it entails moving to a SaaS (Software as a Service) program that offers comparable features. It may sometimes refer to a licensing change, in which you start a new license arrangement with the cloud provider for their service and cancel your previous on-premise license. The improved, more recent cloud version offers superior value because of its higher productivity, decreased need for app storage, and cheaper maintenance costs.

A few examples are switching from your internal CMS to Drupal, migrating your HRM to Workday, and switching from your on-premise CRM to Salesforce or Hubspot. During the migration process, this approach is simple, fast, and very labor- and time-efficient.

5. Retain

Analyzing the crucial apps or sections of your digital assets that need significant revision before being moved to the cloud is called "retaining," sometimes referred to as "re-visiting." Eventually, you might find that certain apps are more appropriate for deployments on-premise. In other situations, apps are kept around due to regulatory constraints, latency requirements, or just plain inefficiency.

In hybrid cloud native development, organizations often use the retaining strategy to maintain business continuity throughout protracted migrations. For example, a large FMCG company set up a hybrid cloud infrastructure to support their ongoing migrations to AWS. It keeps sensitive data and important workloads on-premises while taking advantage of cloud computing.

6. Retire

A retire strategy means removing applications from your IT portfolio that are static or no longer required. Software can be eliminated or reduced in scope if it is decided it is not worth moving to the cloud. It lets you review every one of your programs in terms of features, dependencies, and operating expenses.

Since there isn't any migration, this method is a little passive. Stephen Orban of AWS estimates that once moved to the cloud, up to 10% of an organization's IT portfolio becomes inoperable and can be disabled.

Decommissioning apps is a complex procedure that needs to be taken into deliberation when choosing which apps to retire, despite its seemingly straightforward appearance.

Selecting the right cloud migration strategy

Rehosting, re-platforming, and refactoring are the three fundamental choices for cloud migration services strategies, while there are many variations as previously mentioned.

The most popular approach for migrating legacy applications is lift-and-shift, often known as rehosting. The code may need to be changed very little or not at all for rehosting; it merely has to function on an operating system hosted in the cloud.

Replatforming entails customizing the program for the selected cloud platform. Replatforming entails modifying some code to use standard cloud services, like load balancing, but it doesn't need you to re-architect and rewrite the program.

Refactoring, also known as re-architecting, entails rewriting and containerizing the program to enable it to communicate with the entire suite of cloud services.