7Rs Cloud migration steps

What is Retire

Decommissioning apps that are no longer needed. This reduces cost and complexity—basically saying goodbye to useless old software.

What is Retain

Keeping the app as-is in the current environment (on-prem) because it might be too complex to migrate now or not cloud-ready yet.

What is Rehost

"Lift and Shift" - Moving applications to the cloud without changing the code. It's fast and useful when you're under time constraints or want to migrate legacy systems quickly.

What is Relocate

Allows you to move entire infrastructure stacks (like VMs) into AWS without purchasing new hardware or re-architecting—especially useful for VMware Cloud on AWS.

What is Repurchase.

Replacing your current app with a SaaS alternative. For example, moving from a licensed on-prem CRM to Salesforce.

What is Replatform

"Lift, Tinker and Shift - Involves making minor optimizations during migration to take advantage of cloud benefits—like moving a self-hosted database to Amazon RDS.

What is Refactor or Re-architect

Rebuilding the application from scratch to leverage full cloud-native capabilities like microservices, serverless, or containerization.