What is Lift and Shift Migration?

Lift and shift migration is a popular strategy in cloud adoption where an organization moves its existing applications and data to a cloud platform with minimal or no changes to the architecture or codebase.

This approach is also called "rehosting" and offers a quick way to modernize and scale IT operations without redesigning applications from scratch.

• The process involves replicating existing applications, databases, and workloads from on-premises infrastructure to cloud environments almost exactly as they were originally deployed. No significant redesign, re-architecture, or deep refactoring is needed.
• This strategy is ideal when organizations need to reduce data center costs quickly, respond to business changes rapidly, or are limited by internal resources to undertake complex modernization projects.
• A key benefit of lift and shift is speed: migrations can be accomplished faster than traditional re-architecture efforts, helping companies realize cloud benefits more quickly and avoid large CapEx investments in hardware.
• Organizations often use lift and shift as a starting point, getting systems working in the cloud first and then planning cloud-native modernization or optimization later as time and resources allow.
• Lift and shift migration retains existing workflows and business processes, minimizing disruption to daily operations. This helps maintain business continuity throughout the migration process.
• However, applications migrated using lift and shift may not take full advantage of cloud-native features such as auto-scaling, serverless computing, or microservices unless further optimization is performed after migration.
• This approach is best suited for legacy systems, large-scale migrations (such as thousands of database tables), or situations where there are major differences between on-premises and cloud technologies that make code refactoring costly and time-consuming.
• Common use cases include quick disaster recovery, datacenter closures, or urgent modernization needs where extended refactoring isn't possible.
• Some challenges include unexpected performance issues or limited cost benefits if applications were not designed for cloud environments, so ongoing monitoring and planning for future optimization is recommended after the initial move.

Lift and shift is often the fastest, simplest, and least risky way to migrate applications to the cloud, but true cloud optimization typically comes from further modernization after rehosting.

Table of Contents

1. Why Enterprises Use Lift and Shift
2. Benefits of Lift and Shift Migration
3. Challenges of Lift and Shift Migration
4. Lift and Shift vs. Other Migration Strategies
5. How to Execute a Successful Lift and Shift Migration
6. Best Practices for Enterprises using Lift and Shift Migration
7. Tools and Platforms That Enable Lift and Shift
8. Future Outlook: Beyond Lift and Shift

Why Enterprises Use Lift and Shift

Enterprises use the "lift and shift" approach to quickly and efficiently move their existing applications and infrastructure to the cloud without major modifications. This method is appealing for organizations looking to minimize risk, cost, and complexity during digital transformation.

Reduces Costs

• Businesses can stop paying for hardware maintenance, licensing, and on-premises infrastructure when applications run in the cloud.
• Lift and shift means fewer expenses on redesign and development efforts, resulting in a lower upfront investment.

Saves Time

• Migration is much faster because it focuses on moving existing systems as they are, rather than rewriting or replatforming applications.
• Enterprises can meet urgent deadlines, such as compliance requirements or business expansions, much quicker.

Minimizes Operational Disruption

• Since the applications are moved without changes, day-to-day business is not heavily disrupted.
• Employees continue to use familiar systems, which shortens learning curves and reduces productivity loss.

Lowers Migration Risk

• There is less chance of introducing errors since the structure and logic of the applications remain unchanged.
• Stakeholders are more likely to approve migrations because data stays consistent and easier to validate.

Maintains Business Continuity

• Mission-critical operations remain available during the move, thanks to minimal downtime.
• The impact on customers and partners is minimal during the transition period.

Enables Future Optimization

• Companies get a quick start in the cloud and can further optimize or modernize their applications later, once they are cloud-based.
• Post-migration, organizations can gradually adopt cloud-native features to enhance performance as needed.

Simplifies Planning and Execution

• The process is straightforward and requires less technical change management or business process overhauls.
• Automation tools help make the move smoother and speed up overall execution.

This approach gives enterprises a fast, practical path to modernize IT infrastructure, reduce costs, and improve organizational agility with minimal business risk.

Benefits of Lift and Shift Migration

Lift and shift migration is one of the fastest ways businesses move workloads to the cloud without making major changes to applications. It is often considered the first step for organizations that want to take advantage of cloud flexibility, reduce costs, and prepare for modernization. Below are the key benefits explained in detail:

Speed of migration

• This approach is faster than other migration methods because applications are moved “as-is” without code changes.
• Businesses can shift workloads quickly, which is critical when there are tight timelines for cloud adoption.
• It reduces the time between planning and actual deployment, allowing organizations to start using cloud resources sooner.

Cost savings in the short term

• Companies avoid the upfront costs of rewriting or re-architecting applications.
• Hardware and data center expenses reduce almost immediately after moving to the cloud.
• Short-term savings are noticeable, especially for businesses that want a quick return on migration investment.

Minimal disruption to business operations

• Employees can continue using existing applications with little to no training.
• Day-to-day business activities are not interrupted because applications work the same way after migration.
• IT teams spend less effort troubleshooting, as applications behave similarly in the cloud environment.

Pathway to modernization

• Lift and shift provides a foundation for future cloud-native improvements at a convenient pace.
• Once applications are in the cloud, businesses can gradually adopt services like automation, AI, and containers.
• It works as a stepping stone toward more advanced strategies such as refactoring or re-platforming.

Challenges of Lift and Shift Migration

While lift-and-shift migration helps organizations move workloads to the cloud quickly, it comes with several challenges that impact long-term efficiency and value. This approach often prioritizes speed over optimization, which may create issues around costs, compliance, and performance if not addressed carefully.

Below are the key challenges:

Hidden Costs and Inefficiencies

• Workloads moved without optimization often run with the same architecture as on-premise.
• This leads to higher cloud bills, as resources are not sized or configured for cloud cost efficiency.
• Maintenance and licensing costs can also rise, since legacy systems continue to consume more resources in the cloud.
• Without governance, teams may spend more on storage, bandwidth, and operations than expected.

Limited Optimization for Cloud-Native Features

• Lift and shift does not take advantage of auto-scaling, serverless computing, or managed databases.
• Workloads stay in their original form, meaning businesses lose the full performance and flexibility the cloud can offer.
• Applications may not integrate well with modern cloud services, limiting innovation and agility.

Security and Compliance Risks

• Legacy systems often lack built-in security controls that cloud environments require.
• If security policies are not redesigned, vulnerabilities may move into the cloud unchanged.
• Data migration without proper encryption can cause compliance violations.
• Misalignment with industry-specific regulations, like GDPR or HIPAA, can increase both risks and penalties.

Technical Debt Considerations

• Moving legacy workloads as-is means existing inefficiencies and outdated code remain intact.
• This creates more technical debt, as future modernization must still be done later at higher costs.
• Teams may face difficulties scaling and upgrading applications when they are not cloud-optimized.
• Over time, this slows business innovation and increases reliance on outdated architectures.

Lift and Shift vs. Other Migration Strategies

Choosing the right cloud migration strategy is critical for B2B enterprises aiming to modernize their technology while balancing costs, risks, and future flexibility.

“Lift and shift” (rehosting) is often seen as the fastest path, but other strategies like replatforming and refactoring offer different benefits and trade-offs.

Rehosting (Lift and Shift) vs. Replatforming

• Rehosting means moving your application and its data to the cloud exactly as it is, without changing code or features. It avoids disruption and enables a quick move to cloud infrastructure.
• Use rehosting when you need a fast migration or want to quickly reduce on-premises infrastructure costs. This path minimizes change and risk during migration.
• Replatforming updates parts of your application during migration for better use of cloud technologies. You may change databases, tweak configurations, or swap middleware but avoid a complete rebuild.
• Replatforming is a middle-ground approach that lets you improve performance or access new cloud features without fully re-architecting the application.
• Choose rehosting if speed and cost-savings matter most. Consider replatforming if you want to benefit from new cloud capabilities and can accommodate some changes along the way.

Rehosting vs. Refactoring

• Rehosting is best when your main goal is to move quickly with minimal risk or effort. The app runs in the cloud “as is” and business processes remain unchanged.
• Refactoring (sometimes called rearchitecting) means significantly rewriting, restructuring, or rebuilding the application. This method targets high performance, scalability, and cloud-native features.
• Refactoring demands more time, resources, and specialized skills and is ideal for applications that need major modernization or must leverage advanced cloud services.
• Select rehosting to migrate legacy or stable workloads with minimal changes. Choose refactoring only when you need future-proof architecture or have long-term digital transformation targets.

Choosing Based on Enterprise Goals

• Start by analyzing your application size, complexity, and business priorities before picking a strategy.
• For urgent cloud adoption, quick cost reduction, or if your app is not mission-critical, opt for rehosting.
• If you aim to leverage cloud automation, scalability, or new features and have room for minor changes, choose replatforming.
• Select refactoring only if you have a strong case for deep modernization, ample time, and resources, and seek to future-proof the application.
• Always align your approach with enterprise goals such as speed, cost, performance, risk tolerance, and desired cloud functionality.

How to Execute a Successful Lift and Shift Migration

A lift and shift migration helps organizations move applications and workloads to the cloud with minimal code changes. While it sounds simple, success depends on careful planning, structured execution, and continuous optimization.

Below are the key steps for carrying out a lift and shift migration effectively.

Assess Application and Infrastructure Readiness

• Review your current application portfolio and identify which workloads are suitable for a direct cloud move.
• Check dependencies between applications, databases, and integrations to avoid disruption.
• Identify performance requirements, such as latency or throughput, before moving workloads.
• Evaluate infrastructure capacity and plan for equivalent or improved performance in the cloud.

Select the Right Cloud Provider

• Compare providers based on cost models, available regions, and service offerings.
• Ensure the provider offers the required compute, storage, and networking resources for your workloads.
• Check compatibility with your existing technology stack to reduce integration issues.
• Look for providers with reliable support and proven migration tools that can speed up execution.

Establish Governance, Compliance, and Security Controls

• Define clear governance policies to manage roles, responsibilities, and access permissions.
• Ensure the migration plan complies with industry-specific regulations such as HIPAA or GDPR.
• Secure workloads with encryption, firewalls, and identity management systems.
• Monitor data handling practices to align with organizational and legal requirements.

Perform Testing and Validation

• Run test migrations in controlled environments before executing in production.
• Validate application performance by comparing pre-migration and post-migration metrics.
• Test for system reliability, backup processes, and disaster recovery readiness.
• Collect feedback from users and IT teams to confirm the migrated systems work as expected.

Optimize Post-Migration

• Continuously monitor workloads for performance issues, cost overruns, or resource underutilization.
• Right-size resources to balance performance with cost efficiency.
• Refactor or modernize applications that may benefit from cloud-native services over time.
• Establish regular reviews to improve governance, compliance, and security measures.

A lift and shift migration is not just about moving applications, it is about ensuring readiness, minimizing risks, and building a foundation for future cloud innovation. Careful planning and ongoing optimization turn a basic migration into a long-term cloud success.

Best Practices for Enterprises using Lift and Shift Migration

Enterprises moving to the cloud often face challenges when balancing business needs, technology choices, and long-term goals. To maximize outcomes, organizations must align migration plans with strategy, adopt modern tools, and create teams that drive collaboration.

The following practices help enterprises achieve smoother cloud transformation and prepare for future growth.

Aligning migration with business strategy

• Always link cloud migration decisions with overall business outcomes such as cost efficiency, agility, or faster innovation.
• Define clear use cases that support revenue growth, customer experience, or operational resilience.
• Involve business leaders early to ensure the cloud roadmap reflects both technical and commercial priorities.
• Avoid treating migration as only a technology upgrade, connect it directly to business value.

Using automation and AI-driven tools

• Automate repetitive tasks such as provisioning, monitoring, and patch management to cut manual errors.
• Use AI-based tools for predicting capacity needs, improving workload placement, and detecting performance issues.
• Adopt intelligent security automation to identify threats faster and ensure continuous compliance.
• Allow teams to spend more time on innovation instead of routine infrastructure management.

Building cross-functional teams

• Form teams that include IT, security, operations, finance, and business stakeholders.
• Promote shared accountability so that decisions consider technology, cost, and risk in balance.
• Encourage frequent communication across departments to avoid silos and speed up decision-making.
• Invest in training programs so teams build both technical and business cloud skills.

Planning for future cloud optimization

• Design migration with flexibility to support modernization, scaling, or vendor diversification.
• Continuously review spending patterns to identify cost optimization opportunities.
• Evaluate emerging cloud-native services like containers, serverless, or AI platforms for competitive advantage.
• Treat cloud as an ongoing journey, with regular assessments to enhance performance and value.

Tools and Platforms That Enable Lift and Shift

Lift and shift migrations help organizations move existing workloads, apps, and data to the cloud with minimal changes. Using the right tools and platforms streamlines the process, enhances reliability, and minimizes downtime.

Below are key categories with practical examples and their values.

Cloud Provider Native Migration Tools

• AWS Migration Hub lets you discover, plan, and track all cloud migration activities in one dashboard, integrating with AWS tools like DMS and SMS for seamless workload transfer. It centralizes progress reporting and supports cross-team collaboration.
• Azure Migrate offers automated assessment and migration planning, integrating with services like Site Recovery and Database Migration Service for hassle-free rehosting of virtual machines, databases, and apps to Azure. You benefit from built-in monitoring, cost estimation, and optimization features.
• Google Cloud Migrate provides easy workload migration using robust planning and automation. It supports deep pre-migration assessments and compatibility checks, reducing risks and ensuring smooth transitions with real-time monitoring of migration status.

Third-party Migration Accelerators

• Carbonite Migrate automates discovery and replication of physical, virtual, or cloud workloads. It minimizes downtime by continuously syncing changes between environments and supports various cloud platforms and migration types, including lift-and-shift and re-platforming.
• Cloudsfer enables secure migration of files, databases, and apps between multiple cloud providers. The scheduled transfer and data synchronization options allow for flexible migration planning and minimal disruption to business operations.
• Most third-party tools prioritize security with encryption during transfer and simplify the migration workflow for both technical and non-technical users. Their dashboards often include drag-and-drop functionality and intuitive task setup.

AI-powered Observability and Monitoring

• Leading tools use AI to analyze application performance before, during, and after migration. They detect issues and provide actionable insights, so teams can fix problems quickly and maintain smooth service delivery.
• Advanced monitoring platforms like Datadog enable real-time visibility into resource usage, bottlenecks, and errors during migration. They send alerts and generate detailed reports for optimization, reducing downtime and post-migration troubleshooting.
• Multi-cloud support is common, letting you monitor apps across different providers on centralized dashboards. This helps maintain compliance, security, and reliability through the entire migration cycle.

Choose the right migration tool based on your organization’s infrastructure, workload complexity, and business goals. An effective lift and shift strategy combines native cloud and third-party tools, reinforced by AI monitoring for seamless and secure cloud migration.

Case Study Example: Lift and Shift in Action – Max Healthcare Modernization

Business Challenges

• Max Healthcare needed to modernize 17 critical HIS modules that covered core hospital functions such as patient registration, pharmacy, laboratory, and radiology.
  • Each of these modules contained 50–150 screens, making frontend development highly complex.
  • The team had to ensure smooth integration with a domain-centric backend that was vital for clinical operations.
• The development team consisted of only 6 Angular specialists within a 15-member group, which created a resource bottleneck.
  • This limited capability slowed down progress while expectations for reliability and performance were high.
• The initial project timeline was set at 15 months, but the pace of development risked extending delivery to 30 months, which would delay digital transformation goals.
  • Hospitals required a faster rollout to improve patient experience and operational efficiency.
• External outsourcing was not an option for backend systems, as they contained sensitive business logic tied to compliance and regulations.
  • This meant the in-house team carried full responsibility for both speed and accuracy.
• The team also faced pressure to deliver a refined user interface, meet strict compliance standards, and maintain performance across thousands of users.
  • Achieving all three in parallel was not possible without new accelerators and methodologies.

Lift and Shift Strategy in Action

• Max Healthcare adopted a lift and shift method, focusing first on moving existing applications to modern infrastructure without rearchitecting everything.
  • This allowed the team to deliver faster, ensuring modules were available on time with minimal disruption.
• By leveraging accelerators and UI frameworks, the development process for the Angular frontends became more efficient.
  • This reduced repetitive work on common components while maintaining design consistency.
• The immediate lift and shift enabled the organization to hit critical milestones, while also creating a roadmap for future optimization.
  • After migration, the system could be iteratively refined for better scalability, performance, and UI enhancement.

Key Outcomes

• Faster migration compared to full re-engineering, preventing project delays that could extend by another 12–15 months.
• Consistent frontend standards across multiple modules, even with a small Angular team.
• Compliance and security maintained without outsourcing sensitive backend logic.
• A future-ready platform where optimization and modernization can continue step by step without jeopardizing stability.

Future Outlook: Beyond Lift and Shift

The cloud journey is no longer about simply moving workloads from on-premises environments to the cloud. Organizations are now shifting toward building applications that are cloud-native, intelligent, and future-ready.

Beyond the basic "lift and shift" approach, the next stage of modernization focuses on containerization, microservices, automation, and leveraging AI for smarter operations.

• Businesses are increasingly adopting containerization to make applications portable and flexible, ensuring they run consistently across multiple cloud and on-premises environments.
• Microservices architecture is replacing monolithic applications, allowing enterprises to scale individual components independently and accelerate new feature releases.
• AI-driven cloud operations are becoming common, with predictive analytics and machine learning helping optimize resource usage, reduce downtime, and automate repetitive management tasks.
• Serverless computing is gaining traction, allowing teams to focus on writing code while the cloud provider automatically manages the infrastructure and scaling.
• Observability and automation platforms are being integrated to proactively monitor performance, identify risks, and instantly resolve issues with minimal human intervention.
• Cloud-native security tools are advancing to safeguard distributed applications, ensuring compliance and resilience against evolving cyber threats.
• The evolution also emphasizes multi-cloud and hybrid strategies, giving organizations the freedom to choose the right environment for each workload, reducing vendor lock-in.

The future of cloud modernization moves far beyond migration. It is now about building smarter, scalable, and AI-optimized ecosystems that drive real business transformation.

What's Next

Lift and shift migration offers enterprises a powerful starting point for cloud adoption, delivering speed, reduced upfront costs, and minimal disruption. While it may not unlock all the advantages of cloud-native optimization on day one, it positions businesses for future innovation, scalability, and modernization. For decision-makers under pressure to accelerate digital transformation, lift and shift can serve as both a practical first step and a strategic bridge to long-term cloud maturity.

If your organization is considering lift and shift migration, the key to success lies in careful planning, the right cloud provider, and leveraging AI-driven tools to maximize efficiency and minimize risk.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is the difference between lift and shift and cloud-native migration?
Lift and shift means moving your existing applications to the cloud without changing them—basically rehosting. Cloud-native migration means redesigning or rebuilding applications to fully use cloud features like containers, microservices, and automation. Lift and shift is faster but less optimized, while cloud-native takes longer but delivers more benefits.

How long does a typical lift and shift migration take?
The time depends on the size and complexity of your systems. Small applications can be moved in weeks, while large enterprise workloads may take a few months. It’s generally faster than other migration methods since no major code changes are required.

Is lift and shift more cost-effective than refactoring?
In the short term, yes. Lift and shift saves time and upfront costs because you don’t change the app. However, it may lead to higher cloud costs later, since the apps aren’t optimized. Refactoring takes more investment upfront but can reduce long-term costs with better efficiency.

What are common risks of lift and shift migration?
The main risks are:

• Higher cloud bills due to unoptimized workloads
• Carrying over technical debt and inefficiencies
• Security and compliance issues if not properly planned
• Limited ability to take full advantage of cloud-native services

Which workloads are best suited for lift and shift?
Lift and shift works best for:

• Legacy apps that need quick cloud migration
• Applications with tight migration deadlines
• Workloads that don’t need major performance upgrades right away
• Systems that will be optimized later once in the cloud