Sometimes the priority is simply to get out of a data centre before a lease ends or hardware fails, and a deep refactor would take too long. Lift-and-shift rehosts your servers to the cloud largely as they are, delivering speed and a clean exit. We do it methodically so the move is fast without being reckless, and we leave you positioned to optimise afterwards.
Rehosting suits situations where time matters more than redesign: a looming data-centre exit, ageing hardware, or a need to prove cloud viability quickly. It moves applications with minimal change, so it carries less project risk than refactoring and delivers results sooner. We are candid about its trade-off, namely that you do not immediately gain cloud-native efficiencies, and we identify which workloads are genuinely good rehost candidates versus those better replatformed. This keeps the engagement focused on what lift-and-shift does well rather than overpromising transformation.
Even a straightforward rehost fails without knowing what depends on what, so we inventory servers, applications, and their interconnections, capturing performance baselines to size targets correctly. Dependencies are grouped into migration waves so tightly coupled systems move together and avoid mid-migration breakage. We define cutover windows, rollback plans, and validation tests for each wave. The result is an ordered plan that turns a daunting data-centre exit into a sequence of manageable, low-surprise moves with clear success criteria for every step.
We use block-level replication tooling to copy servers continuously to the cloud while the originals keep running, so the actual cutover is short. Each wave is tested in the cloud target before going live, confirming the application behaves and connectivity is correct. At cutover we sync the final changes, switch traffic, and run smoke tests, with a defined rollback if validation fails. This approach keeps downtime to a brief, planned window rather than an extended outage, which matters when the systems being moved still serve the business daily.
Once workloads are running in the cloud, we validate performance against the baselines taken beforehand, confirm monitoring and backups are in place, and decommission source infrastructure only after a stabilisation period. Crucially, we hand over a prioritised list of post-migration optimisations: rightsizing, managed-service adoption, and resilience improvements you can pursue now that the urgent move is done. Lift-and-shift gets you to the cloud quickly, and this roadmap ensures it becomes a foundation to build on rather than a like-for-like copy frozen in place.
It can be, if you stop there. We treat rehosting as the first step, getting you to the cloud quickly, then hand over a clear optimisation roadmap. The speed and lower risk are real benefits when timelines are tight, provided you plan to improve afterwards.
Far less than a refactor, because applications move largely unchanged. Timelines depend on the number of servers and dependency complexity, but rehosting is typically the quickest path to the cloud. We give a realistic schedule after discovery, broken into waves.
We generally recommend rehosting first, then optimising once stable, so the move stays fast and low-risk. Mixing heavy redesign into the migration reintroduces the very risk lift-and-shift avoids. The exception is obvious rightsizing, which we apply as we go.
Plan and execute production-grade AWS migrations with secure landing zones and right-sized workloads.
Move Windows, SQL Server, and Microsoft 365 estates to Azure with identity-first governance.
Migrate data, analytics, and containerised apps to Google Cloud with BigQuery and GKE.
Deploy predictable, cost-effective hosting on DigitalOcean Droplets, managed databases, and App Platform.
Package applications into lean, reproducible Docker images with secure, multi-stage builds.
Run resilient, self-healing workloads on Kubernetes with autoscaling, Helm, and GitOps delivery.
Protect data and services with tested backups, defined RPO and RTO, and rehearsed failover.
Cut cloud spend through rightsizing, commitment discounts, and a sustainable FinOps practice.
Harden cloud estates with least-privilege identity, encryption, and continuous compliance monitoring.
Modernise ageing applications incrementally with the strangler-fig pattern and managed cloud services.
Move from costly managed platforms to a self-managed cloud setup your own team can run.
Contact our team and we will send the best implementation plan for your business.