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“Lift and shift” is a term for when you move to “the cloud” but really just replace your physical servers with clones in cloud VMs. It’s a relatively cheap (in

“Lift and shift” is a term for when you move to “the cloud” but really just replace your physical servers with clones in cloud VMs. It’s a relatively cheap (in terms of effort) way to get on “the cloud” but gains you basically zero of the benefits. The term’s in wide use, talk to anyone involved with cloud-anything and they’ll be familiar with it. I’m not sure what else needs to be translated? Nothing, I think?

mmcgaha 3y ago
Lift and shift is a sales term to make it sound like the internal team is trying to over-complicate the migration. The sales guy will normally phrase it as "just lift and shift."
- neilv 3y ago
  I love it. I could totally believe the etymology starts as slick sales persuasion trying to downplay the implementation difficulty of something that's being sold. And then people also pick it up for non-persuasion, because it also sounds like a catchy name for an engineering approach we already had. Of course it can still be used for persuasion for awhile, but will grow baggage over time, as efforts linked to the term don't play out that way.
neilv 3y ago
Thanks for the explanation, but no need to imply that someone is out of the loop if they didn't know it. The term didn't sound familiar to me (though the concept was), and the term might not have been familiar to some others. People might not want to contradict an assertion because of language like "The term’s in wide use, talk to anyone involved with cloud-anything and they’ll be familiar with it. [...] I’m not sure what else needs to be translated? Nothing, I think?"
- wharvle 3y ago
  > People might not want to contradict an assertion because of language like "The term’s in wide use, talk to anyone involved with cloud-anything and they’ll be familiar with it. [...] I’m not sure what else needs to be translated? Nothing, I think?" > > LinkedIn was having a hard time taking advantage of the cloud provider's software. Sources told CNBC that issues arose when LinkedIn attempted to lift and shift its existing software tools to Azure rather than refactor them to run on the cloud provider's ready made tools. The only other terms I can see that are jargon are "cloud provider" and "refactor", and those are already technical (more or less) so don't need to be translated into technical language. As for the other bit, I just meant that it's a widely-used term so one may continue to encounter it in these contexts. It truly is ubiquitous in discussion of and around "enterprise transformations" to the cloud, and among cloud practitioners more generally, so anyone connected to that space will know what it means. It's also kinda already a technical term, in that developer/devops and SRE sorts throw it around and do mean a specific thing by it, which doesn't need to be translated for other technical folks in that area.
  - neilv 3y ago
    "Ten Thousand" https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ The original person might've instead asked for an explanation in a way that didn't come across as criticizing the article. But probably best not to insist that everyone should already know the term; just explain it.
    - wharvle 3y ago
      Yeah, you're probably right. Feedback received.

mmcgaha 3y ago

Lift and shift is a sales term to make it sound like the internal team is trying to over-complicate the migration. The sales guy will normally phrase it as "just lift and shift."

neilv 3y ago
I love it. I could totally believe the etymology starts as slick sales persuasion trying to downplay the implementation difficulty of something that's being sold. And then people also pick it up for non-persuasion, because it also sounds like a catchy name for an engineering approach we already had. Of course it can still be used for persuasion for awhile, but will grow baggage over time, as efforts linked to the term don't play out that way.

neilv 3y ago

Thanks for the explanation, but no need to imply that someone is out of the loop if they didn't know it. The term didn't sound familiar to me (though the concept was), and the term might not have been familiar to some others. People might not want to contradict an assertion because of language like "The term’s in wide use, talk to anyone involved with cloud-anything and they’ll be familiar with it. [...] I’m not sure what else needs to be translated? Nothing, I think?"

wharvle 3y ago
> People might not want to contradict an assertion because of language like "The term’s in wide use, talk to anyone involved with cloud-anything and they’ll be familiar with it. [...] I’m not sure what else needs to be translated? Nothing, I think?" > > LinkedIn was having a hard time taking advantage of the cloud provider's software. Sources told CNBC that issues arose when LinkedIn attempted to lift and shift its existing software tools to Azure rather than refactor them to run on the cloud provider's ready made tools. The only other terms I can see that are jargon are "cloud provider" and "refactor", and those are already technical (more or less) so don't need to be translated into technical language. As for the other bit, I just meant that it's a widely-used term so one may continue to encounter it in these contexts. It truly is ubiquitous in discussion of and around "enterprise transformations" to the cloud, and among cloud practitioners more generally, so anyone connected to that space will know what it means. It's also kinda already a technical term, in that developer/devops and SRE sorts throw it around and do mean a specific thing by it, which doesn't need to be translated for other technical folks in that area.
- neilv 3y ago
  "Ten Thousand" https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ The original person might've instead asked for an explanation in a way that didn't come across as criticizing the article. But probably best not to insist that everyone should already know the term; just explain it.
  - wharvle 3y ago
    Yeah, you're probably right. Feedback received.