March 13, 2025
Whether rehosting, replatforming, or refactoring, the right approach can optimize value, scale efficiently, and unlock innovation. The wrong choice could leave your business struggling to realize the true potential of cloud technology.
Despite predictions that 85% of businesses will adopt a cloud-first strategy, many will miss out on the full benefits due to a lack of strategic alignment. It’s not just about moving applications but understanding which migration strategy fits your business’s current needs and future goals.
In this article, we look at the most common cloud migration strategy and help you make the optimal choice for long-term success.
Cloud migration is as much a strategic technical decision as it is a logistical challenge. Moving to the cloud has profound implications for your business as it affects how you scale, manage resources, and can leverage innovation in response to market changes. Success lies in selecting a cloud migration strategy that aligns with your current and future needs.
Successful cloud migrations have driven notable gains for companies like Dropbox and GE, which both boosted operational efficiency by up to 30% through better collaboration and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. When done correctly, the financial impact is also compelling for example, Coca-Cola cut operational costs by 40% after moving to AWS. Unilever is another success who saw a 20% drop in logistics costs thanks to cloud-powered supply chain improvements.
These examples show that some companies were successful in dealing with compatibility issues, unexpected expenses, and data security concerns. But getting there involved trial and errors and also getting the help to choose the right migration strategy. This is where the 6 Rs of cloud migration becomes comes into play.
The 6 Rs framework is a widely recognized strategy that helps organizations assess the best approach for moving applications to the cloud. These six migration methods are:
Rehosting, often called “lift and shift,” is a cloud migration strategy that allows businesses to rapidly transition existing applications to the cloud with minimal changes to their existing technology stack. This approach is particularly well-suited for businesses with relatively modern applications which can easily be moved to a cloud environment. Rehosting works when the applications can take advantage of the cloud’s architecture and features.
A rehosting effort enables businesses to quickly adopt cloud services without the complexity of re-architecting existing systems. For companies operating under immediate operational demands, such as a retailer gearing up for peak shopping periods, rehosting offers a fast and efficient path to the cloud while maintaining operational continuity. By leveraging their current infrastructure, companies can avoid the higher costs and complexities typically associated with more comprehensive cloud strategies.
It has strategic limitations. While it provides a fast route to cloud adoption, it often leaves companies without the full benefits of cloud-native capabilities. Applications may not fully take advantage of optimized performance, scalability, or cost efficiency. As a result, businesses may eventually need to transition to more advanced strategies—such as replatforming or refactoring—to achieve deeper cloud integration and sustained value.
Connecting the Dots: Rehosting offers a valuable starting point for businesses prioritizing immediate migration. Yet, it should be considered part of a broader cloud strategy that will need to evolve incorporating more sophisticated optimizations as business needs and technological capacities grow.
As businesses advance their digital transformation, replatforming has emerged as a pragmatic approach to cloud migration. Often referred to as “lift, tinker, and shift,” this method optimizes legacy applications by integrating cloud-native features without needing a complete architectural overhaul. The result is enhanced performance, scalability, and operational efficiency, with fewer complexities and lower costs than a full application rewrite.
It strikes an ideal balance between the rapid deployment found with rehosting and the deeper resource demands needed for refactoring. It enables businesses to modernize their infrastructure incrementally, reducing initial expenditures while gradually aligning systems with evolving business needs. It also ensures that the legacy applications are better able to take advantage of cloud capabilities without incurring excessive expenses.
Replatforming ensures applications benefit from better system performance and support for continuous operations. For example, migrating a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application to a managed database service or Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS). DBaaS is a cloud-based offering where a third-party provider manages and maintains the database infrastructure on behalf of the user. Such an approach can enhance data retrieval speeds while reducing maintenance demands, allowing IT teams to focus on higher-value tasks.
Key Benefits of Replatforming
Connecting the Dots: Replatforming offers immediate cloud benefits without the heavy resource demands of complete refactoring. Its success requires careful planning and alignment with short-term efforts and long-term goals. While it delivers cost efficiency and faster time-to-value, businesses must manage risks like vendor lock-in and scope creep to ensure sustainable value.
Refactoring applications to utilize cloud-native capabilities has become a strategic imperative for many businesses. Companies can achieve better agility, scalability, and cost-efficiency by breaking monolithic applications into smaller, independent components. Refactoring is a technical overhaul and transformative approach that prepares businesses for the future.
Refactoring involves restructuring applications to fully utilize modern cloud capabilities such as microservices, serverless computing, and containers. This process re-architects systems to be more adaptable, elastic, scalable, and resilient while maintaining the same external behavior of the application. Refactoring moves businesses away from rigid, monolithic structures and into a flexible framework where components can be updated or scaled independently for much greater agility.
Refactoring with microservices and cloud-native technologies offers businesses the flexibility to adapt to shifting demands quickly. By enabling independent scaling and updates for specific services, companies can respond faster to market changes and optimize performance during critical times—for instance a retailer scaling its website capacity to handle the increase in holiday traffic and order volumes.
Connecting the Dots: Serverless computing and containers also help reduce unnecessary infrastructure costs by scaling specific resources only when needed. More than a technical upgrade, refactoring is a strategic move that helps companies streamline operations, reduce costs, and stay agile.
How Leading Companies Leverage Refactoring
Netflix and Amazon used refactoring to gain a clear edge. By transitioning from a monolithic architecture to microservices, Netflix has been able to scale effortlessly as its global audience grows and tio support quickly rolling out new features. This flexibility has been crucial in maintaining a seamless user experience, even during peak traffic spikes.
Amazon followed a similar path, breaking down its e-commerce platform into services including order fulfillment and inventory management. This move allows their teams to innovate faster and continuously release updates and new capabilities that enhance both the consumer and vendor experiences.
Connecting the Dots: Refactoring makes applications more efficient and creates an infrastructure built for the future that aligns with business growth. It improves agility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness, allowing companies to innovate and respond to changing needs faster. But businesses must navigate potential challenges, like vendor lock-in and ensuring their systems and teams can take full advantage of capabilities includingcloud-native applications. Balancing short-term agility with long-term flexibility is vital to realizing the full benefits of this approach.
While cloud migration offers numerous advantages, it also presents risks if not properly managed. The most common pitfalls include data loss, compatibility issues, and hidden costs from poor planning or misalignment with business goals.
Minimizing risks requires a few key steps:
Connecting the Dots: Businesses can avoid costly setbacks during and after migration by taking these proactive steps. The key is to align your migration strategy with your long-term business objectives to transition to the cloud and thrive once there.
In a prior post we dug deeper into how to select the right cloud service provider. Selecting the right cloud provider is critical to the success of your migration strategy. Each provider has unique strengths and the choice should be based on decision criteria connected to your business needs and long-term goals. We provide a quick summary of the big three public cloud service providers:
Connecting the Dots: Choosing the right cloud service provider is both a strategic and technical decision. Your cloud service provider should align since amisalignment can lead to increased costs, limited functionality, and missed opportunities.
Cloud migration is a technical move and a strategic initiative that can shape the future of your business. By carefully assessing your needs and choosing the proper migration method—rehosting, replatforming, or refactoring—you can have a smooth transition to the cloud while maximizing the long-term value of your investment.
In our next blog post, Streamlining the Cloud Migration Process for Business Agility, we’ll guide you through creating a detailed migration roadmap, from choosing the suitable service model (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) to managing data migration and ensuring a smooth transition. Stay tuned for practical insights to make your cloud migration a success!
We’re a technology consulting firm that supplies strategic consultants, subject matter experts, and agile project teams to harness the power of both people and technology.
Headquarters
9115 SW Oleson Rd, Ste 100
Portland, OR 97223
503.726.4545
Explore More
