There are six main types of cloud migration companies and organizations can pick from, commonly referred to as the six Rs.
Re-host: Also known as a “lift-and-shift” strategy, re-hosting consists of moving applications into the cloud using infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers. Start relocating the simplest items first, and end with the most complex dependencies.
Re-factor: Organizations going for this strategy will use a platform as a service (PaaS) provider to run their applications and will reuse frameworks and codes to do so.
Re-platforming: This strategy involves making some changes to your existing applications as part of the migration so that they can run in the cloud more effectively. In this scenario, it’s most common to keep the core or main application architecture as is while making some modifications to better optimize the application’s performance in the cloud.
Revise: With this strategy, developers will at the very least partially rewrite or expand on already existing code and deploy it using re-host or re-factor strategies.
Rebuild: As the name suggests, a rebuild strategy consists of rewriting and remaking the architecture from zero using a PaaS provider. This is usually done to take advantage of modern PaaS capabilities, but it can be a labor-intensive process.
Replace: This strategy consists of discarding previously used applications and using already-built and ready-to-use applications from software as a service (SaaS) vendors.