Cloud Lift and Shift

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First Added:July 10, 2025 Updated: May 17, 2026

Cloud Lift and Shift

Cloud Lift and Shift was a term coined in the early days of the Cloud. Companies wanted to migrate their datacenters to the cloud to lower cost, but they didn’t want to change anything about their workloads. This approach was largely unsuccessful at the time.

Currently, it has come to mean switching between similar services of different cloud providers to save cost. Very commonly it is migrating workloads (stateful and stateless), databases, and files between clouds chasing credits. It is a losing game; it is far better to lean into a Hybrid Cloud mentality where workloads stay on the most effective provider and you bridge accounts securely.