Cloud Migration vs. Cloud Native

It’s clear that the cloud is the future of business for many organizations, but it’s not always clear how to get there. Many companies have existing investment in infrastructure and applications in their own data centers and colocation facilities (“edge computing”), and they want to know what strategies exist for using the cloud and what the trade-offs are.

There are many options on how to use the cloud, including:

• Partial cloud migrations or “hybrid cloud”

• Using cloud for on-demand capacity or “cloud bursting”

• Migrating to Software as a Service (SaaS)

• Using multiple public cloud providers or “multicloud”

We won’t focus on every possible option here; however, you should be aware that varied approaches exist and explore all options as you research the right solution for you.

In this article, we look at two different ways to take advantage of the cloud: performing a “cloud migration,” or rebuilding to have your technology be “cloud native” (sometimes called re-platforming). By the end of this article, you’ll understand the pros and cons of each of these two approaches, and when you should perform one over the other.

Cloud Migration

A cloud migration is a common approach for getting your existing infrastructure and services into a cloud provider. It involves as few changes to the existing systems as possible by re-creating the same resources, architecture, and services in the cloud provider.

Even within cloud migration there are different ...