Cloud migration refers to the process of moving digital business operations to a cloud-based hosting provider; this will normally involve wholly (or partly) transitioning infrastructure, data, applications and other IT workloads from on-premises servers into a cloud computing environment. Cloud migration can also refer to moving from one cloud provider to another.
The global ecommerce retailer Etsy launched its own cloud migration strategy in 2018, citing the need for long-term scalability and sustainability. The company had maintained its own infrastructure since inception in 2005, but completed its migration to the cloud in 2020, reportedly saving over 40% in compute costs. If you choose Cloudways as your cloud hosting partner, we’ll take care of the otherwise complex process of migration for you.
Businesses usually opt for a migration to the cloud due to the operational challenges of their current model; for instance, the inability to scale server resources due to sudden traffic spikes, restrictive operational costs, inefficient processes and unmanageable data storage requirements. Migrating to the cloud offers complete scalability, a reduction in operational costs and near-unlimited storage capacity.
There are generally considered to 5 cloud migration techniques (referred to as the “5 Rs”). These are:
– Rehosting (also known as ‘lift and shift), which involves using IaaS to redeploy existing data and applications onto cloud servers
– Refactoring (or ‘lift, tinker, and shift’), which employs PaaS to tweak and optimize applications before migrating them to the cloud
– Revising, which requires more extensive changes to be made to code and architecture before it can be moved to the cloud
– Rebuilding, which means discarding and replacing existing architecture before migration
– Replacing, which involves migrating to a third-party application provided by a vendor
