Ok, so you’ve decided to move to the cloud… or your boss told you to. Now what? Next step is to decide on what type of cloud migration project to go for: so-called “lift and shift” or the more involved “move and improve.” What are the attendant costs associated with each type of migration? What is the return on investment? And, ultimately, what is the best decision for your company?
In this article, we’ll explain the two types of cloud migration and give you an in-depth look at the process for the most common type of cloud migration, “move and improve”.
Two Types of Cloud Migration
The process for each type of migration is different; the end result is often different. The right option isn’t set in stone – it’s important to consider how each type of migration might affect your long-term goals and needs.
Lift and Shift
This type of migration involves using technology that takes your existing systems and copies them into the cloud as-is. A ‘Lift-and-Shift’ is all about speed. You want the minimum amount of change necessary to minimize the amount of testing require Various technologies can be used to accomplish “lift and shift”, but at the base level, they all work in essentially the same way, by replicating the storage data from your on-premises servers to the cloud.
Time and Cost
Lift and shift is appealing in that it is cost-effective and quick – cheap and fast, relatively speaking, with a typical migration timeline of 2-3 months, or as little as three weeks – but you should remember that nothing except the location has really changed for your systems. Any problems that were present before will still exist, and likely, still need to be addressed.
A reason you might select this option is maybe you lost the lease to your datacenter and have a drop-dead date by which you must be out. Here is a pure hypothetical for you: maybe you’re the government of the Ukraine and a foreign power is trying to cripple your information systems with rocket attacks, and you need to move everything to AWS European Region via Snowmobile over a weekend. Either scenario the Lift and Shift is for you.
However, if a gun is not to your head, figuratively or literally, I’d recommend the move and improve”.
Move and Improve
Like its colloquial name implies, “move and improve” is taking the existing system and improving it while moving it to the cloud. The hallmark is, obviously, that the servers will not be migrated as-is. You will need to provision new operating system instances, and your apps will need to be reinstalled. Move and improve is the most common choice for JD Edwards users.
If you’re wondering if you should upgrade first and then move to the cloud, check out this previous blog we wrote about the process.
Time and Cost
Just as with lift and shift, time and cost are the two top considerations for a move and improve migration decision. For a JD Edwards project, a typical timeline is anywhere between four and seven months. If the customer chooses to change their platform – say from IBMi/AS400 to SQL Server or Oracle Database – there are certain timing complexities associated with that migration. If you’ve made customizations, such as modifying P4210 or other JDE objects, that extends the timeline, too.
Pros of Move and Improve
One of the biggest benefits of move and improve is the opportunity to pay down technical debt. If you have deprecated operating systems, security issues, and out-of-support databases this is an excellent opportunity to start paying off technical debt a business has been accruing over the years.
Additional long-term business value can also be delivered to the customer as part of this work. Installing a newer version of JD Edwards could now enable the customer to use Orchestrator, allowing them to take certain existing business processes and automate them.
Cons of Move and Improve
Because of the more involved nature associated with move and improve, costs are necessarily higher than with lift and shift. Not only are there more moving parts, the cost of labor is also a factor. Changing platforms as noted above also contributes to a higher overall cost. Additional necessary database licensing is also a cost factor to keep in mind.
Making the right choice for your business
In the end, choosing which type of cloud migration process is right for your business comes down to many customer-specific factors. It is important to weigh the pros and cons of each. Most JD Edwards customers choose the tried-and-true “move and improve” cloud migration, as it delivers the most additional bang for their proverbial buck.
For more information on starting the cloud migration journey, you can get started with a cloud readiness assessment.
