What does the term 'lift and shift' refer to in cloud migration?

The term 'lift and shift' refers to the process of rehosting applications in the cloud without making significant changes to their architecture or code. This approach allows organizations to quickly migrate existing applications to a cloud environment, leveraging the benefits of cloud computing such as scalability, flexibility, and reduced infrastructure costs, while minimizing the complexity and risk associated with re-architecting or redesigning applications.

By choosing to lift and shift, organizations can maintain continuity in their operations, as applications function the same way in the cloud as they did on-premises. This method is particularly advantageous for businesses looking to move to the cloud quickly or for those that need to assess their applications' performance in a cloud environment before committing to any redesign or optimization.