Study guide
Technical reference and lesson notes
Migration is not one strategy. The right path depends on how much change the organization can absorb and what outcomes it expects after the move.
Choose the amount of change deliberately
Rehosting minimizes application change and can move workloads quickly. Replatforming changes selected components to gain cloud benefits without a full rewrite. Refactoring changes the application architecture more substantially and can unlock greater elasticity or managed-service adoption.
Evaluate dependencies first
Application dependencies, data gravity, licensing, maintenance windows, and rollback requirements often determine sequencing.
- Inventory dependencies before defining waves.
- Use migration waves to contain operational risk.
- Validate performance and recovery after migration, not only connectivity.
Modernization is an outcome
A migration can be successful without immediate refactoring. Modernization should be justified by measurable operational, security, cost, or delivery improvements.