What does "lift-and-shift" mean in cloud migration?

The term "lift-and-shift" in cloud migration refers to the practice of moving existing applications and workloads from on-premises environments to the cloud without making any changes or modifications to the applications themselves. This approach allows organizations to quickly migrate to the cloud, leveraging the scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of cloud resources while maintaining their current application structure and functionality.

By using the lift-and-shift method, organizations can speed up their migration process, reduce the initial complexity, and avoid the time and resource investment that would be required for re-architecting applications for the cloud. This strategy can be particularly beneficial for businesses looking to move applications with minimal disruption or resource reallocation while still taking advantage of cloud services.

In contrast, other migration strategies may require significant alterations to applications or development of new applications to fully utilize cloud-native features, which is not the focus of the lift-and-shift approach.