Migrating to Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) as a Cloud Service can be a fun and exciting time for your organization. The prospects of new capabilities, modern design systems and infrastructure, better security, and increased efficiency are very attractive. It is also an initiative that requires careful planning and handling. Investing the time and effort to develop a migration plan that is right for your organization not only takes advantage of the latest and greatest technology that the new platform has to offer, but also because the precious time and money spent today will continue to pay off. is also important. for years.
There are several approaches to migration and it’s important to take the time to migrate correctly. Options range from implementing lift & shift to landing somewhere in a complete rewrite or in-between.
Taking the time to carefully consider the right approach can make the difference between a smooth and successful one-time migration, or several costly trials and a still less-than-stellar implementation. could mean. This unfortunate situation recently occurred with one of our clients. A previous partner built their initial solution around supporting one country and developed what appeared to be a fully functional and successful implementation. But when we were brought in and it was time to support a multinational approach, unfortunately the previous solution could not support the new requirements and we had to start over. Careful planning prior to the early stages could have prevented wasting time and money on the first short-sighted implementation.
Lift & shift method
The lift-and-shift approach is very attractive because it seems to reduce cost and effort by quickly porting everything to a new platform with an “update later” mentality. However, without careful planning, this can quickly become a problematic and costly approach.
This approach requires your code to be compatible with the new platform. Simple implementations that primarily use out-of-the-box functionality can benefit greatly from this approach if they can reuse functionality from new platforms without extensive development or customization.
That said, when performing a mature website migration, it’s safe to assume that the site has existed and has been iterating for some time. Trying to quickly recreate a site that took years to develop and author can quickly spiral out of control. If you don’t take proper care to review and clarify your business logic and resolve existing technical debt, you’ll be one step behind in starting a new platform. This approach can also inherit or introduce new security risks, process and performance inefficiencies, accessibility issues, brand inconsistencies, and technical bugs.
Going down the lift-and-shift route can also prevent you from getting the most out of your new platform. Reusing existing technology may prevent you from taking advantage of new capabilities offered by new platforms. One such example has been focusing on minimal effort upgrades over the years for his enterprise-level AEM implementation, primarily with the intention of running on new platforms. I am a longtime client. This meant that after multiple upgrades, its implementation was years behind and did not take advantage of the many great improvements AEM had developed.
A successful lift-and-shift will allow you to get your new platform up and running quickly, but may carry over process, performance, technical debt, and issues from previous implementations, but not the new features and capabilities the platform offers. cannot benefit from
Rewrite method
The Rewrite method, on the other hand, takes the time to review existing implementations, preserve good reusable logic, and recreate and rebuild the most impactful items from scratch. Every scenario is unique and in some cases rewrite is a cheaper alternative to lift & shift. In other cases, the initial cost can appear to be a bigger investment in the short term.
This approach avoids the risks of a lift-and-shift approach, making new codebases and platforms more likely to be secure, efficient, performant, and maintainable. Well-written logic that can be reused from older implementations is migrated after an audit to ensure there are no potential improvements in efficiency, security, modernization, and future proofing.
The Rewrite approach also gives you the opportunity to take advantage of the latest technologies and features of the new platform, but removes deprecated features that may not be supported in the future. This allows you to spend less time worrying about maintaining your implementation post-migration and realize greater ROI through personalized and targeted experiences and impactful decisions such as developing new features to increase customer satisfaction. You can spend a lot of time creating.
A successful rewrite can resolve branding discrepancies, accessibility issues, and existing bugs and technical debt while improving performance, infrastructure and security, content creation, and ongoing maintenance.
In-between method
The “In-Between” approach uses a thorough audit of existing implementations and flags features that can be carried over from previous implementations, features that need updating and modernization, and features that need a complete rewrite. It includes a plan to put up.
Like the “lift and shift” approach, this approach requires sufficient system compatibility to allow code to be shared between old and new platforms. We try to take advantage of both the “lift and shift” and “rewrite” approaches, but we are also exposed to their risks.
This approach resolves branding conflicts, updates and modernizes critical pieces of functionality, eliminates high priority existing bugs and security risks, and takes advantage of the platform’s most business-critical new features. you will have the opportunity to However, this approach requires additional stages of planning and research, and can require significant time investment by the business team.
A successful implementation depends on whether the system is already fairly well built and has enough logic to share with the new system. This allows implementations on new platforms without the need to rewrite all existing business logic. It also gives you the opportunity to take advantage of new features and resolve critical issues that may carry over.
Taking the time to carefully plan your migration strategy is critical to maximizing your chances of success with the new platform. This gives us the opportunity to focus on adding value through the platform and reduces the costs associated with deferring updates and fixes for existing issues carried over from previous implementations. The team can work on marketing and business strategy, personalization and marketing campaigns to give customers the best possible experience.
Careful reviews and audits of existing implementations and technologies by expert partners can ensure the best approach to migration. The effort to deliberately build new implementations correctly and efficiently will yield a net return on investment for years to come.
