6Rs of Cloud Migration: How ACI Fuel Business Reinvention and Market Leadership

Cloud migration is a strategic P&L lever, not a mere IT chore. The choice of the right “R” defines whether your enterprise unlocks true agility, drives down unit costs, and accelerates innovation or simply re-hosts legacy technical debt in a new data center. The 6Rs framework offers a powerful, clear playbook to treat each workload according to its business value: retire what no longer serves your goals, repurchase SaaS to leapfrog outdated customizations, and refactor or replatform where performance, resilience, and scalability create measurable differentiation. 

Build once, scale everywhere turn your application portfolio into a streamlined engine of impact and measurable outcomes. In today’s hyper-competitive digital economy, cloud migration done right becomes a catalyst for growth, operational excellence, and long-term sustainable advantage. Don’t just move to the cloud use it to transform your business from day one. 

Cloud Migration: The Operating-Model Advantage 

While “big-bang” moves grab headlines, most value arrives from consistent, low-risk treatments per workload. The 6Rs compress time-to-value, reduce incident risk, and free teams to ship features: 

• Speed: Cut cycle time from quarters to weeks with managed services and templates. 
• Reliability: Autoscale, blue/green, and tested rollbacks make change safer. 
• Cost control: FinOps, right-sizing, and reserved capacity align spend to demand. 
• Compliance: Centralized identity, encryption, and audit trails provide evidence, not promises. 

The 6Rs, Plain and Practical 

• Rehost (“lift & shift”) – Move as-is to IaaS when deadlines loom (DC exit, M&A). Fastest exit, carries existing debt. 
• Replatform (“lift, tinker & shift”) – Minimal code tweaks to adopt PaaS/DBaaS/containers. Big reliability wins, moderate effort. 
• Refactor – Change code to use cloud patterns (queues, functions, caches). Best for agility, performance, and long-term TCO. 
• Repurchase (Replace) – Swap custom with SaaS/ISV for commodity capabilities (CRM/HR/ITSM). Faster capability, plan for data migration. 
• Retire – Decommission redundant/low-value apps. Immediate cost/risk reduction. 
• Retain – Keep on-premise for now (latency, regulation, contracts). Manage as part of a deliberate hybrid. 

The End-to-End Journey: From Inventory to Stable Production 

1) Portfolio & Data Engineering 

Get your facts straight before you move anything. 

• Build a CMDB-light: owners, SLAs, integrations, data classes, licenses. 
• Map business criticality and tech constraints (latency, compliance, uptime). 
• Identify quick wins (replatform/repurchase) vs. flagship refactors. 

Key actions: 

• Tag apps with value/effort/time scores (1–5). 
• Mark candidates to retire early. 
• Confirm data locations, sizes, RPO/RTO. 

2) Landing Zone Readiness 

Migration starts with foundations. 

• Identity & access: SSO/MFA, least-privilege roles, break-glass. 
• Network: Hub-spoke/VPC/VNet, private endpoints, DNS, IPAM. 
• Security: KMS/HSM, secrets, WAF, vulnerability scans, posture mgmt. 
• Observability: Central logs/metrics/traces (OpenTelemetry), alerts. 
• FinOps: Tags, budgets, anomaly detection, commitment strategy. 

3) Choose the Right “R” 

Use a repeatable rubric, not gut feel. 

• Score Value (40%), Effort (30%, inverted), Time (30%, inverted). 
• Guardrails: 
  • Don’t rehost systems already breaching SLOs. 
  • Don’t refactor without a product owner, KPIs, and rollback plan. 
  • Every repurchase needs data-export/exit terms. 

4) Execute the Migration 

Data first, then app. Rehearse, then cut over. 

• Data patterns: snapshot import, CDC streaming, dual-write, read-replica swap. 
• App move: freeze changes; build artifact; configure via secrets; smoke + contract tests. 
• Cutover: blue/green or canary via weighted DNS/ingress; watch latency, errors, saturation. 
• Rollback: pre-approved criteria + scripts; practice before go-live. 

5) Stabilize, Optimize, Industrialize 

• Right-size compute; set autoscaling guardrails. 
• Validate DR runbooks and backups. 
• Publish KPIs (SLO attainment, MTTR, $/1k requests). 
• Scale via a migration factory (templates, automation, shared runbooks). 

Why ACI Infotech for Cloud Migration 

We turn migration into measurable outcomes on Azure and across clouds. 

Azure partnership & cloud credentials 

• Strategic Microsoft Azure partner with 12+ years delivering modernization, security, and data platforms on Azure (AKS, App Service, API Management, Azure SQL/Cosmos DB, Synapse/Databricks, Event Hubs, Functions). 
• Co-build/co-sell motions with Microsoft field teams; access to exclusive Azure accelerators and blueprints for landing zones, data platforms, and app modernization (available to ACI clients through our partner programs). 
• Multi-cloud delivery across AWS and Google Cloud when hybrid strategies matter; consistent guardrails for identity, network, observability, and FinOps. 

Selected projects we’ve delivered 

• Banking (US) — Migrated fraud analytics & AML pipelines to Azure Databricks + ADLS Gen2, streaming via Event Hubs/Kafka; delivered a material reduction in batch windows and faster investigator turnaround with policy-as-code controls. 
• Global Retailer — Replatformed order & inventory services to AKS + Azure SQL, fronted by API Management and Redis; achieved peak-season resilience with autoscaling, blue/green rollouts, and right-sized runtime costs. 
• Healthcare Provider — Built FHIR-first APIs on APIM + AKS, private EHR connectivity, and audit-grade logging in Log Analytics; reached a HIPAA-aligned posture with end-to-end traceability. 
• Manufacturing — Implemented IoT telemetry ingestion via IoT Hub + Time Series + Data Explorer, with predictive maintenance in Synapse/Databricks; avoided downtime through early-warning KPIs surfaced in Power BI. 
• SaaS Platform — Deployed multi-region DR with Traffic Manager/Front Door, geo-replicated storage, and automated failover; achieved lower MTTR and contractual SLO attainment. 

How we engage (and de-risk) 

1. Portfolio Assessment & Business Case: Exec-ready scorecards quantify value, risk, and cost to pick the right mix of Rs per app. 
2. Azure Landing Zone & Guardrails: Identity, network, security, observability, and FinOps baselines codified in IaC. 
3. Migration Factory: Automation kits for rehost/replatform, reference patterns for refactor, SaaS selection for repurchase, and structured retire/retain workflows. 
4. Data & Integration Modernization: Parallel tracks so no app is left isolated; API gateways, messaging, and data platforms upgraded together. 
5. Operate & Optimize: SRE runbooks, chaos drills, cost governance, continuous improvement. 

Result: Faster moves, fewer surprises, lower unit costs, and a roadmap that keeps paying back backed by deep Microsoft alignment and ACI’s reusable Azure assets. 

Ready to Transform Your Business with Strategic Cloud Migration? 

We’ll map your entire application portfolio to the right 6Rs strategy, quantify your operational and cost value, and craft a tailored 90-day execution roadmap aligned to your industry and compliance requirements. 

Partner with ACI Infotech to convert your migration complexity into a competitive edgesecurely, swiftly, and with measurable outcomes. 

Talk to an ACI Cloud Migration Expert