Your company is “moving to the cloud.” What does that actually mean for your legacy systems?
Understanding what replatforming, refactoring, and rehosting mean in cloud migration is critical—because choosing the wrong migration strategy can cost millions and derail digital transformation initiatives before they even begin.
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What is Rehosting in Cloud Migration?
Rehosting—commonly referred to as lift-and-shift migration—transfers your applications from your data center to cloud infrastructure with minimal modifications.
The operating system, application code, and codebase remain virtually identical to your source environment. This cloud migration approach often makes sense when time constraints are tight, data center contracts are expiring, or decision-makers need quick wins without major changes to the application architecture.
Legacy applications running on virtual machines can be migrated to AWS while maintaining business continuity and avoiding the scope creep that often accompanies architectural overhauls.
What is Replatforming in Cloud Migration?
Replatforming strikes a balance between speed and optimization. This replatforming migration strategy involves making targeted improvements during the cloud migration process—such as switching to managed services like Amazon RDS, upgrading web servers, or applying version upgrades—without restructuring your entire application stack.
The approach delivers immediate cloud benefits, such as cost optimization and improved performance, while sidestepping the technical debt that often accompanies more aggressive changes.
Database migration to managed services often proves a strong fit, as does application modernization that prioritizes performance improvements and cost savings through improved resource utilization.
What is Refactoring in Cloud Migration?
Refactoring rebuilds applications to fully leverage cloud-native features, such as serverless computing and auto-scaling. This data migration method requires software engineering teams to modify the code structure and application architecture, sometimes significantly.
While refactoring demands the most migration effort upfront, it delivers maximum long-term benefits through enhanced performance, improved disaster recovery capabilities, reduced infrastructure costs, and a better customer experience via faster response times. Customer-facing applications where performance degradation directly impacts business outcomes often justify this investment in cloud optimization.
Why Assessment Determines Everything
Up to 60% to 75% of cloud migration projects fail to deliver the expected business value, not because cloud technology itself is flawed, but due to inadequate planning, a lack of clear strategy, skills gaps, underestimated complexity, and cost overruns.
At dbSeer, we begin every engagement with gap analysis, mapping your current state to desired business goals. Our assessment examines application performance, technology stacks, security risks, maintenance costs, and crucially, how these align with your business objectives and time constraints. This foundation-first methodology prevents expensive mistakes.
The Hybrid Reality
Here’s what cloud service providers won’t emphasize: successful cloud migration may combine all three approaches across different systems. Your customer platform may need refactoring for cloud features, while stable back-office applications can be rehosted quickly and revisited later. Database infrastructure often benefits from replatforming to managed services for immediate cost optimization. The key is matching the migration method to specific use cases and business requirements rather than forcing one-size-fits-all cloud migration plans.
Ready for a successful cloud migration? Contact dbSeer today for an initial assessment that determines which cloud migration tools and migration services fit your specific journey—using the right approach in the right places.
