The 6 R's of AWS Migration: Which Strategy Is Right for Your Business?

1. Rehosting: Lift and Shift

Rehosting is the most direct path to the cloud. You move your existing applications to AWS as they are, without touching the underlying architecture. Think of it as picking up a server and setting it down in a different location.

Best for: Large legacy applications, teams with tight migration timelines, or businesses that need to exit a data centre quickly.

Pros: Fast to execute, minimal rework, and immediate savings on hardware costs.

Cons: You do not get the full benefit of cloud native capabilities, and any existing technical debt comes with you.

Rehosting typically delivers 20 to 30 percent cost savings on infrastructure alone by eliminating on premises hardware and licensing overhead. It is the most common starting point for organizations new to cloud migration services who want early wins before diving into deeper optimization.

2. Replatforming: Lift, Tinker, and Shift

Replatforming sits between a basic lift and shift and a full architectural overhaul. You make targeted cloud optimizations during the move without rebuilding the core application. A typical example: migrating from a self-managed MySQL database to Amazon RDS or moving a Java application to AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

Best for: Applications that can benefit from managed services without requiring a full rebuild.

Pros: Better performance and easier management than a straight rehost, with relatively modest effort.

Cons: Requires more upfront planning than rehosting, and some testing is needed to confirm compatibility.

This approach is popular among mid-market businesses working with cloud migration consulting firms because it balances speed with meaningful improvement. Switching to a managed aws database migration service like RDS, for instance, removes the burden of manual patching, backups, and failover management. This translates to real operational savings without a full rewrite.

3. Repurchasing: Drop and Shop

Repurchasing means replacing your current solution with a SaaS alternative. Common examples include moving from an on-premises CRM to Salesforce or switching from a legacy HR platform to Workday.

Best for: Aging software that is hard to maintain and has a solid SaaS replacement available.

Pros: Removes maintenance overhead and typically comes with regular updates and new features built in.

Cons: Data migration can be complex; users need retraining, and licensing costs may shift.

In 2026, this strategy is gaining renewed interest as businesses take a hard look at older ERP and collaboration tools. A knowledgeable aws migration partner can help you work out whether repurchasing will cost less and perform better over the long term than carrying legacy software into the cloud.

4. Refactoring and Rearchitecting: Modernize to Maximize

Refactoring is the most ambitious path, and often the most rewarding. It involves redesigning your application to be cloud native from the ground up. That might mean breaking apart a monolithic architecture into microservices, or rewriting applications to take advantage of serverless computing, containers, and AWS native APIs.

Best for: High value applications constrained by their current architecture, or businesses that need serious scalability and faster feature delivery.

Pros: Maximum cloud benefit: genuine scalability, resilience, and the ability to move fast.

Cons: Time intensive, requires a larger upfront investment, and demands strong cloud engineering expertise.

The growing use of AI and machine learning workloads on AWS is pushing more businesses toward this approach. If you need real time analytics, need to serve millions of users, or want to deploy AI models at scale, refactoring opens doors that legacy infrastructure simply cannot. This is where working with experienced aws cloud consultants makes a measurable difference.

5. Retiring: Shut It Down

When businesses go through a proper portfolio assessment, they almost always find applications that nobody really uses anymore. Estimates suggest 10 to 30 percent of a typical enterprise application portfolio falls into this category. Retiring means decommissioning those systems rather than spending time and money moving them.

Best for: Duplicate tools, end of life applications, or systems already replaced by something better.

Pros: Cuts cost, reduces complexity, and lowers security risk right away.

Cons: Requires stakeholder agreement and a careful review of what depends on each system before switching it off.

Identifying retirement candidates is one of the first things the cloud migration experts at One Data do when evaluating your portfolio. Every application that gets retired means fewer migration resources required, which translates to lower cost and faster delivery for the applications that do move.

6. Retaining: Keep It Where It Is (For Now)

Not every application needs to move to the cloud right away. Some workloads are tied to compliance requirements, rely on specialized hardware, or are midway through an upgrade cycle. Retaining means leaving them in place until the timing makes more sense.

Best for: Recently upgraded systems, applications with regulatory constraints, or those already scheduled for replacement.

Pros: Avoids unnecessary disruption and protects investments you have already made.

Cons: Requires regular revisiting to avoid indefinite inaction.

A hybrid approach that intentionally keeps specific workloads on premises while migrating others is a perfectly sound strategy, and one that experienced cloud consulting services teams recommend regularly.