Lift and Shift

Sometimes the right move is not to redesign a system but to carry it over as it stands. If your data centre contract is ending, your hardware is ageing, or you need the flexibility of the cloud soon, moving the existing software without rewriting it is the fastest and most predictable route.

That is exactly what lift and shift means here: we rebuild the environment your application runs in on Google Cloud Platform without touching its architecture. The code stays largely the same, your team's habits do not change, and the cutover window stays narrow.

When this is the right route

• There is a deadline — a contract ending, a hardware refresh, a data centre exit
• The application works and does not need to change yet
• You want to get to the cloud first and leave modernization for later

Let us be clear: migration alone does not reduce cost. An application running on a virtual machine still runs on a virtual machine in the cloud, and it uses almost none of the scaling, managed services and pay-as-you-go advantages. We say this up front, because the gap between the expectation after a migration and the invoice that follows is the most common disappointment.

That is why we usually treat lift and shift as a first stop rather than a destination — once the system is in the cloud we work out together which part is worth modernizing first.

We explain how we start a piece of work and how we finish it, step by step.

If you have a system that needs to move, write to us and let us look at what should go first.