What Are the 7 Types of Cloud Migration?
Why Do Cloud Migration Strategies Matter?
Cloud migration strategies are essential for IT modernization because they provide a structured approach to migrating applications and data from on-premises environments to the cloud, whether that be a single provider or a multi-cloud architecture.
Without a clear strategy, organizations may encounter disruptions, increased costs, compliance issues, or even failed projects. A well-defined migration plan ensures business continuity, maximizes cloud benefits, and reduces risks.
The rapid acceleration of cloud adoption has led more enterprises to operate in multi-cloud environments, where workloads are spread across multiple public and private cloud providers. While this model offers flexibility and helps organizations avoid vendor lock-in, it also introduces complexity, particularly during application and data infrastructure migrations. Data gravity, latency concerns, and regulatory requirements all necessitate modernizing the data layer as part of a migration initiative.
Why Are Migration Strategies Critical for IT Modernization?
Migration strategies are critical because they help organizations proactively identify the best approach for each workload, avoid common pitfalls, and achieve both near-term and long-term IT goals.
Whether the priority is minimizing downtime, cost optimization, or achieving geographical distribution for high availability, the appropriate strategy underpins digital transformation efforts and ensures that new infrastructure investments deliver measurable returns.
What Should IT Leaders Consider During Cloud Migration?
IT leaders must evaluate their existing landscape, identify dependencies, and prioritize workloads for migration according to business impact and technical feasibility.
Distributed SQL databases, like YugabyteDB, can support seamless migration across environments by providing a consistent, resilient data layer that is cloud-native and platform agnostic.
As organizations embrace these migration strategies, adopting a distributed SQL approach accelerates modernization by delivering reliability, strong consistency, and high availability across global deployments. This positions IT teams to confidently migrate, scale, and innovate with minimal disruption.
What Are the 7 Types of Cloud Migration Strategies?
The primary cloud migration strategies are:
- Rehost
- Replatform
- Refactor
- Retire
- Retain
- Repurchase
- Relocate
These strategies, also known as the 7 Rs, range from moving applications as-is to a cloud provider to completely redesigning systems to leverage cloud-native features, such as distributed SQL, or adopting new software-as-a-service platforms.
Choosing the right strategy depends on your workload, available resources, and business priorities. Let’s take a deeper look at these seven types of cloud migration strategies and the contexts in which they should be used.
1. Rehost
Rehost, a cloud migration strategy often referred to as “lift and shift,” involves migrating workloads and applications by copying them from their existing environment into the cloud. Minimal or no changes are made to the underlying code, architecture, and processes. The lift and shift approach serves as an efficient way to quickly leverage cloud infrastructure without extensive redevelopment efforts.
However, while rehosting speeds up cloud adoption and can reduce capital expenses, it may not immediately optimize performance or unlock full cloud-native capabilities. Applications migrated using this method might later require replatforming or refactoring to tap into advanced cloud features.
This strategy is ideal for organizations facing tight deadlines, such as end-of-life hardware scenarios, or for those seeking to exit costly on-premises data centers. It is also used when the application is stable and runs well, but the current infrastructure is hindering scalability or operational agility. Enterprises with legacy workloads that are difficult to refactor or organizations aiming for a low-resistance migration path can benefit from this strategy.
2. Replatform
Replatform cloud migration, often referred to as “Lift, Tinker, and Shift,” involves modifying an application just enough to allow it to benefit from cloud technologies such as managed databases, storage, or container services.
The application’s functionality remains unchanged for end users, but operational aspects are improved through cloud-specific enhancements. Examples of adjustments that could be made include replacing proprietary load balancers with cloud-native ones or altering application logging and monitoring to integrate with scalable cloud tools. These changes minimize code rework while enhancing the application’s cloud readiness.
Replatforming enables IT teams to scale applications efficiently by tapping into autoscaling, automated monitoring, and managed data services. It also allows organizations to experiment with new deployment models and cloud-native patterns in a controlled, incremental way, reducing risk and improving time-to-value. By adopting a replatform approach, enterprises can take meaningful steps toward cloud agility while preserving their previous software architecture investments.
3. Refactor
Arguably the most complex migration approach, refactoring entails completely re-architecting workloads to support cloud-native capabilities, such as serverless computing, autoscaling, and distributed load balancing.
Refactoring should be used when applications require higher scalability, agility, or modernization, often driven by growth or digital transformation goals. The process is tricky because you must make application code changes while ensuring the application’s external behavior remains unchanged.
Refactoring can be costly and time-consuming, but it is the most future-proof migration strategy, and when done properly, it may result in significantly lower operation costs than the legacy architecture.
4. Retire
Retiring involves removing applications prior to migration. This strategy is appropriate when current applications won’t be compatible with the new cloud-based environment or migrating them would be difficult, time-consuming, or troublesome.
This strategy is easy, but it needs to be timed properly so that people currently relying on the applications are not cut off mid-use. It’s also important to find a cloud-based replacement as soon as possible for a seamless transition.
5. Retain
This applies when you need to keep specific workloads on premises for technical, compliance, or strategic reasons, often with plans for future reevaluation.
The retain strategy postpones migration until the timing is better. This may be because an application can’t be used without another that hasn’t migrated yet, or perhaps there’s just no advantage to migrating at the time. This will reduce the work required for the immediate migration, but keeping outdated software can become cumbersome and potentially cause issues.
6. Repurchase
Repurchasing involves replacing an application with its updated, cloud-based version. The cloud-based version usually maintains the same core functions as the original, while offering cloud-based enhancements and benefits.
This strategy should be implemented when your current software can no longer meet your needs. This method is quick since the new version is ready to use, but cloud-based software may have high upfront fees or subscription costs, and your team will need to learn how to use the updated software.
7. Relocate
Relocation refers to migrating entire virtual machine workloads directly from an existing environment into a cloud provider’s infrastructure. This method utilizes specialized migration tools to move workloads as-is, without changing application code or runtime dependencies.
The relocate approach is best suited for organizations looking for rapid migration without the complexity of refactoring or rearchitecting applications. The relocate strategy reduces migration risk and cost by eliminating the need for extensive code adaptation and ensuring rapid deployment in a new environment.
Unlike strategies such as refactor or replatform, relocate does not require modifying application logic or introducing cloud-native services right away. Instead, it is ideal for situations where workload continuity and speed outweigh the immediate need for deep cloud optimization. Additionally, relocating virtual machines supports consistent operational processes, making it easier for IT teams to maintain existing management and security protocols.
Organizations may initially relocate mission-critical workloads to minimize service interruptions, then gradually adopt more advanced strategies, such as replatforming or refactoring, to fully leverage cloud-native features. Choosing the relocation strategy can help IT organizations meet stringent timelines, comply with regulatory requirements, or simply accelerate their journey to the cloud.
Selecting the Best Cloud Migration Strategy for Your Organization
You must begin by assessing your existing applications and data, aligning them to your enterprise’s transformation goals. Understand which workloads are best left on premises for regulatory or latency reasons, which can be rapidly moved with minimal changes, and which justify a deeper re-architecture to harness cloud-native capabilities.
A structured assessment that considers the total cost of ownership, risk tolerance, operational flexibility, and modernization potential is key. Engaging stakeholders from application development, operations, and security teams ensures a holistic evaluation and successful execution.
What Are the Next Steps for IT Modernization?
Modernizing data infrastructure for multi-cloud or hybrid environments does not end with migration. Enterprises must adopt a resilient, future-proof database architecture that scales globally, delivers strong consistency, and supports high availability.
Distributed SQL solutions provide a cloud and platform-agnostic data layer, offering seamless migration paths and operational continuity. Establishing clear governance, continuous optimization practices, and automated monitoring and scaling will further accelerate your cloud adoption and business growth.
Seamless Cloud Migration With YugabyteDB
YugabyteDB helps IT teams achieve a robust migration strategy by delivering scalability, strong consistency, and cross-region availability to handle modern workloads effectively.
Experience AI-powered database modernization by migrating your PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, and cloud databases to YugabyteDB using open source YugabyteDB Voyager’s intelligent automation.
Ultimately, aligning your cloud migration strategy with both business and technical requirements maximizes the value realized from your move to the cloud. YugabyteDB delivers the foundation for seamless, cost-effective cloud transitions, providing strong consistency, high scalability, and agility across multi-cloud or hybrid platforms so you can confidently move your business forward. Contact us and start planning your cloud migration strategy today!