"Lift-and-shift" has become a common approach in cloud migration strategies. The concept seems simple: move your workloads as-is from your datacenter to the public cloud. But what many discover is that lift-and-shift rarely delivers the cost savings, performance improvements, nor agility they expected. Instead, it often leads to new challenges and additional costs.
The hidden pitfalls of lift-and-shift
- Missed cloud-native benefits: Applications migrated without modification often fail to leverage features like autoscaling, containerization, or managed services, limiting performance and efficiency
- Technical debt replication: Legacy architecture issues are carried over to the cloud, perpetuating inefficiencies and complicating future upgrades
- Unexpected costs: Inefficient resource utilization and unoptimized network traffic can result in higher operational expenses than anticipated
- Integration challenges: Dependencies on on-premises systems can lead to latency, compatibility issues, and reduced functionality post-migration
Unexpected financial impact
Organizations often underestimate:
- Overprovisioned compute resources: Migrated workloads often replicate on-premises resource allocation, leading to overprovisioning and inflated costs.
- Premium storage defaults: Cloud services may default to high-performance storage tiers, driving up expenses unnecessarily for workloads that don't require them.
- Egress traffic fees: Transferring data out of the cloud can result in significant and often overlooked costs, especially for data-intensive operations.
- Integration with SaaS and third-party tools: Connecting cloud workloads to external services or tools can require additional investments in licensing, configuration, and ongoing maintenance.
- Optimization and tuning expenses: Addressing inefficiencies post-migration, such as resizing resources or reconfiguring workloads, can add unexpected costs.
VCF as a smarter modernization path
Instead of rearchitecting everything or taking risky shortcuts, VCF allows you to:
- Modernize using familiar VMware solutions: Leverage existing VMware expertise and solutions, reducing the learning curve and simplifying the transition.
- Support cloud-native workloads and automation: Seamlessly integrate modern applications and enable automated operations across environments.
- Simplify infrastructure management: Unify compute, storage, networking, and security into a single platform for streamlined operations and reduced complexity
- Maintain control over sizing, performance, and security: Customize infrastructure to meet specific business needs while ensuring robust security and compliance.
Lift-and-shift might sound simple, but it’s rarely strategic. VMware Cloud Foundation offers a robust alternative: cloud modernization with minimal disruption and maximum control.
Avoid costly surprises. Discover how VCF can modernize your environment without a risky migration. Explore our VCF page.
