Lift and shift is a strategy for moving an application or operation from one environment to another without stopping to redesign the app or operations workflow. The complexity of an application or operation is a key factor in deciding whether something should be lifted and shifted or re-architected from scratch as a new native cloud app or operation.

With the lift-and-shift approach, on-premises applications can move to the cloud without redesign. But they can’t always take full advantage of native-cloud features, so this may not be the most cost-effective migration path. In fact, Gartner estimates that by 2020, organizations lacking cost-optimization processes will average 40% overspend in the public cloud (Ed Anderson, 2018).

Lift and shift is generally a quick and easy way to eliminate the expensive overhead costs of maintaining on-premises servers. By simply rehosting applications in a cloud environment, organizations can continue to operate with minimal service interruption and avoid the high potential costs of rebuilding or redesigning their systems. In many cases, however, this also means that applications may not be optimized to take advantage of the new environment, which can result in companies negating some of those cost savings due to inefficiency.