ChannelVision March-April 2017

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Traditionally, when a company considered a “lift and shift” strategy for moving
its legacy applications and processes to the cloud, the general advice has been:
don’t. That’s largely because lift and shift, which is essentially porting internal
applications and data resources from on-premises data centers to cloud infra-
structure with little to no changes to the existing code, is more akin to a bandage
than it is the eventual “required surgery” of rewriting code for the cloud.
Sure, lift and shift can be the easiest and cheapest way to migrate applica-
tions and processes to the cloud, but reworking or redeveloping code specifically
for the cloud is really the only way to take full advantage of the cloud’s inherent
benefits, including any eventual cost savings.
On the flip side, the cost and complexity of a rewrite surgery has proven a
barrier to cloud adoption, both for small and mid-sized firms down Main Street
and enterprises that have dipped their toes in the cloud-computing waters with
secondary, peripheral IT projects but have refrained from transitioning core
applications and processes. Quite simply, recreating every internal system to a
cloud-native counterpart can be costly, disruptive and slow, and that’s assuming
one is able to find and hire people with the appropriate skills required for developing,
deploying, maintaining and enhancing cloud applications.
Fortunately, in 2017, “lift-and-shift is becoming more viable,” say researchers
at Forrester. According to the research firm, emerging migration vendors have
now started to deliver cheaper, lighter-weight workload migration tools.
“CloudEndure and CloudVelox, just to mention two examples, both offer
much-improved migration solutions,” say Forrester researchers. At the same
time, a growing list of migration services from megacloud providers such as
AWS, IBM and Microsoft, “means the ‘migrate first, transform later, when it
makes sense,’ sentiment is growing.”
That’s significant because improved lift and shift tools make cloud migration
easier and therefore could accelerate the rate of cloud adoption and usage, says
Forrester, if nowhere else, at least in terms of low cost for bulk application migration.
Even so, solution partners should recommend lift and shift with caution. As
Forrester points out, economic and performance benefits will likely be limited
for those that haven’t redesigned applications and processes specifically to
take advantage of a cloud platform architecture.
“Lift-and-shift or not, at some point, customers still need to decide whether
to undertake substantial renovation for those applications that require them,”
warn Forrester researchers. “Pursue selective lift-and-shift, but if you adopt it too
liberally, you’ll limit the economic benefits you can expect from cloud migration.”
‘Lift-and-Shif t’ to Lift
Cloud Adoption Martin Vilaboy
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LETTER
6 ChannelVision | March - April, 2017