Key Takeaway
Moving to AWS isn’t a one-size-fits-all maneuver. The “7 Rs” framework dictates the different pathways you can take to get your workloads into the cloud. While Automat-it is equipped to deliver all seven using comprehensive aws migration services, choosing the right strategy is the difference between unlocking massive ROI and simply exporting your on-prem tech debt.
The 7 Migration Strategies at a Glance
Before diving into the technical weeds, here is a high-level breakdown of the 7 Rs and when they make the most financial and operational sense for your migration. Further insights are available via Automat-it’s Migration offering.
| Migration Strategy | The Approach | Best For | Automat-it Real-World Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Rehost | Lift and Shift | Fast, compliant migrations with minimal code changes. | Penlink: 30% savings on sensitive workloads. |
| 2. Replatform | Lift, Tinker, and Shift | Optimizing core infrastructure without rewriting app logic. | Monce: Azure to AWS ECS with zero downtime. |
| 3. Refactor | Re-architect / Rewrite | Unlocking full cloud-native potential (AI, serverless). | Skai cut customer onboarding time |
| 4. Repurchase | Drop and Shop | Moving from self-managed software to managed SaaS. | Luzia: Self-managed BERT to Amazon Bedrock. |
| 5. Retire | Decommission | Trimming the fat and eliminating wasted spend. | SAIZ: 20% savings via legacy resource removal. |
| 6. Retain | Do Nothing (For Now) | Phased rollouts, strict compliance, or depreciating hardware. | Strategic holdouts during complex migrations. |
| 7. Relocate | Hypervisor-Level Move | Moving containerized/virtualized workloads seamlessly. | Skai: VMware to AWS at scale. |
Breaking Down the 7 Rs (The Automat-it Way)
1. Rehost (Lift and Shift)
Rehosting moves your application exactly as it is from your on-premise environment to the cloud. Using tools like AWS Application Migration Service, this is often the fastest route to the cloud.
The Automat-it Stance:
Proceed with caution. As Automat-it FinOps Analyst Tamir Kafri points out in TechChannel, “lazy code” doesn’t hurt when it runs on sunk-cost on-prem hardware. But in AWS, unoptimized code that hogs CPU or RAM translates directly into bloated instance types and a higher bill. Rehosting only makes sense when there’s a compelling reason not to optimize during the move.
The Success Story:
That compelling reason is often compliance. For Penlink, we migrated a highly sensitive, business-critical workload via the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP). The strict compliance requirements meant the priority was a controlled, zero-risk transition—not re-architecture. Even so, the move to AWS still yielded 30% cost savings simply by leaving behind the overhead of on-premise operations.
2. Replatform (Lift, Tinker, and Shift)
You aren’t rewriting the core architecture, but you are swapping out certain components to take advantage of cloud efficiencies—like migrating self-managed databases to Amazon RDS using AWS Database Migration Service.
The Success Story:
Monce came to us looking to move from Azure to AWS. Without changing their application logic, we swapped them to managed containers (AWS ECS + Terraform + ALB). The result? Zero downtime and deployment times slashed from days to minutes.
3. Refactor (Re-architect)
Refactoring means fundamentally rewriting how your application works to make it fully cloud-native, often breaking down monoliths into microservices, replacing legacy middleware with serverless, or re-platforming entire compute layers. It requires the highest upfront investment but delivers the maximum long-term ROI.
The Success Story (AI Infrastructure):
Numenos was dealing with a chaotic hybrid environment for their AI training models. We completely re-architected their infrastructure, deploying EKS, Karpenter, and KEDA to enable highly efficient, cloud-native parallel AI training.
The Success Story (Legacy to Serverless):
Skai was running thousands of servers across bare-metal, VMware, and OpenStack—resulting in 8-hour customer onboarding times, limited scalability, and high operational costs. We assembled a dedicated DevOps team and re-architected their entire stack onto AWS-native services: Lambda for serverless compute, DynamoDB and Keyspaces for data, EventBridge for event processing, and Pulumi for Infrastructure as Code. The result? Customer onboarding dropped from 8 hours to 30 minutes (94% faster), UI speed increased 2.5x, and backend processing improved 4x.
4. Repurchase (Drop and Shop)
Sometimes, building and maintaining it yourself just isn’t worth the engineering hours. Repurchasing means abandoning your legacy system and moving to a SaaS or fully managed cloud model.
The Success Story:
Maintaining machine learning pipelines is expensive. We helped Luzia replace their self-managed BERT pipeline by repurchasing the capability through Amazon Bedrock. This textbook swap to a managed service resulted in a massive 60%+ cost reduction.
5. Retire
Migration is the perfect excuse for a garage sale. You evaluate your portfolio and simply turn off the resources that are no longer useful.
The FinOps Tie-in:
Retiring resources is a core tenet of our Shift-Left FinOps approach. By proactively auditing what you actually use, you stop bleeding capital.
The Success Story:
During their cloud modernization, we helped SAIZ explicitly identify and remove legacy resources, instantly netting them 20% in infrastructure savings.
6. Retain
Doing nothing is a valid strategy. Sometimes, an application is too integrated into legacy hardware, or you simply want to wait until the hardware depreciates before migrating. Retaining isn’t a failure to migrate; it’s a strategic choice to phase your rollout so you can prioritize higher-value workloads first.
7. Relocate
Relocating involves moving infrastructure to the cloud without purchasing new hardware, rewriting applications, or modifying your existing operations. This is most common for VMware workloads using services like VMWare Cloud on AWS.
The Automat-it Stance:
We’ll be honest. This is rarely the path we recommend. Relocating preserves your existing operational model, which means you also preserve the inefficiencies, licensing costs, and technical debt that came with it. In most cases, we see better long-term outcomes from re-platforming or refactoring VMware workloads onto cloud-native services (as we did with Skai above). That said, relocation has its place: if you’re under extreme time pressure, mid-contract on VMware licensing, or need a stepping stone before a deeper modernization, it can buy you time while you plan the real transformation.
Which Migration Path is Right for You?
We don’t believe in migrating just for the sake of migrating. Whether you are a founder looking to slash your monthly burn rate or a CTO looking to leverage serverless architectures, the right “R” depends entirely on your business goals.
Migrate with confidence today. Stop guessing which migration strategy will yield the best ROI and let the experts map it out for you.
