There are many different methods for migrating companies to the cloud - one of them is Lift & Shift.
Due to the COVID-SARS-19 pandemic in recent years, the topic of cloud and the associated digital transformation of companies is on everyone's lips. Many companies have understood the value and importance of digital transformation in today's globalised world. Companies that have already dealt with the topic of transformation at an early stage are clearly at an advantage in these times. Companies can easily scale infrastructure costs with low or even high volumes of orders, and employees can also work from their home offices without any problems thanks to the cloud solution.
Companies that do not yet have their company-specific applications in the cloud have the possibility to migrate quickly with the Lift & Shift method.
An important aspect here is to pay attention as a company to which cloud solution best fits the requirements in the business. Different cloud models, such as private, public, hybrid or multi-cloud can be the right solution for this. According to these models, it is decided what the target architecture of the cloud solution must look like in order to migrate data and applications to the cloud. Then it is a matter of finding the right method for the cloud migration. Which must fit the company's business field, its general cloud strategy and the applications to be migrated.
Lift & Shift enables fast cloud migration
The Lift & Shift method is an Infrastructure-as-a Service (IaaS) cloud service model. In this model, companies rent resources such as servers, computing power, storage space and network devices as needed from a cloud provider. In simple terms, this method "lifts" the data and applications out of the company's own IT infrastructure and "moves" them to the provider's cloud model.
In this way, data and applications are moved to a cloud-based environment with minimal change, without adaptation or redesign. No changes are made to the programme code or the application itself. This enables Lift & Shift to quickly move data and applications to the cloud. The advantage of this method is the small amount of time required, which can be decisive for your company's competitiveness.
However, the Lift & Shift process should not be thought of as a simple copy & paste operation. It requires a high degree of strategic foresight, planning and documentation. Only in this way can companies ensure that data and applications are mapped correctly in the new cloud environment and run smoothly.
For whom is Lift & Shift suitable?
The Lift & Shift method has become more attractive due to the pandemic last year, because of the fast and cost-effective procedure. The method is ideal for companies that want to move their standardised applications unchanged to an elastically scalable architecture. With little effort, companies can quickly move their applications to the cloud and provide their employees with access from the home office through additional services. Lift & Shift not for very complex applications
The Lift & Shift method is not suitable for all applications. If the application you want to migrate is too complex, the "simple" lift and shift will not work. Here, several adjustments must be made so that the applications run smoothly in the future cloud environment. Here, methods such as refactoring or replatforming are more suitable. Lift & Shift is therefore not the universal solution for complex special or legacy applications. For a cloud migration of complex applications, further adjustments are usually necessary. This often requires a redesign. Without this, companies cannot fully utilise the advantages of the cloud, such as flexibility, elastic scalability and cost efficiency. In principle, such a redesign can also be carried out after the lift & shift. However, it is essential that it is carried out before the actual rollout of the software in order to avoid latencies and performance losses. As managed cloud services, we offer special migration packages for this purpose. To reduce the risk, complexity and workload of your cloud migration.
Conclusion
The Lift & Shift method offers companies a fast and cost-effective way to migrate applications to the cloud. The complexity of the applications plays an important role. The migration model is decided on the basis of the applications to be migrated. Lift & Shift is not suitable for the migration of complex applications. In order to make the migration as fast and secure as possible, companies should consult a consulting partner for the migration in order to make the move to the cloud as smooth as possible.