Greenfield vs. Brownfield Cloud Migration: Which one serves your business the best? (2024)

The ask is two-question simple: Is cloud migration increasingly wiping out legacy systems across organizations worldwide? Absolutely. Does it mean deciding on a cloud migration strategy has become less arduous? Absolutely not.

No doubt, cloud migration is crucial if your company desires to stay competitive and agile. The challenge, however, is that the process of migration to the cloud is complex and demands a lot of decision-making, especially for organizations with large, sophisticated IT systems. One crucial decision involves deciding between greenfield and brownfield cloud migration strategies. In this post, we'll weigh the pros and cons of the two approaches and help you determine the one that helps your business the best.

What are Greenfield and Brownfield cloud migration strategies?

Greenfield cloud migration is what you call it when you move your company’s IT infrastructure to the cloud by building everything from scratch. Meaning, you create a new cloud-native environment for your applications, data, and systems, instead of trying to adapt and move existing systems to the cloud.

Whereas in a brownfield migration, you retain many of the functions and components of your previous application, and selectively migrate only the most critical and proprietary systems and data. This can be a more cost-effective and less disruptive approach, as it allows you to build upon the foundation of your existing infrastructure rather than starting from scratch. However, it may limit your ability to take full advantage of the benefits of the cloud, and can result in a more rigid and less scalable system.

A number of factors, such as the need to improve system performance, reduce maintenance costs, increase agility and scalability, or enhance data security can cause you to go back and forth between the two strategies. Maybe your company prefers an advanced and flexible IT infrastructure over retaining existing information. Or maybe you’d like to save on the resource front. Or maybe both are fine and you just need to expedite the migration. Whatever the case, it helps to stay informed about the pros and cons of the two cloud migration strategies so you can choose one that addresses your organization's needs the best. Check them out below:

Pros of Greenfield Cloud Migration Strategy

Clean start: Since Greenfield migration involves a from-scratch movement strategy, you can tailor the architecture to your unique requirements easily.

Easy adoption of standards: When building from the bottom, you can easily ensure all necessary migration standards are met.

Flexibility: Greenfield migrations allow for complete customization, as they are built from scratch to exactly fit your business's unique requirements.

Scalability: You can scale up or down your systems easily based on your needs.

Adoption of automation and latest tech: An absence of legacy systems and processes means you get the freedom to innovate/automate the way you want.

Cons of Greenfield Cloud Migration Strategy

Costly: The process of a complete rehaul of your systems will be costly. Though the costs may reduce after your migration, the actual process of cloud migration is likely very expensive.

Steep learning curve: It’s challenging to get teams to work on a new system. Keep in mind that they will likely have a steep learning curve and it’ll take some time for your employees to completely adapt to the new systems.

Impacts your internal operations: You may have to rewire everything in your company from your operations, working methodologies, to learning cycles to adopt the new tech.

Expect customization pitfalls: The flexibility to customize your cloud infrastructure to your exact needs comes with a threat: If you're not careful, you may end up creating a system that is too complex and difficult to manage, which can lead to higher costs and lower performance. Keep in mind to strike the right balance between customization and simplicity.

Pros of Brownfield Cloud Migration Strategy

Retain familiarity: When built on top of existing legacy components, it becomes easier for your teams to adapt to the new tech. Because then, it’s not a complete makeover.

Reduce costs: A brownfield cloud migration strategy doesn’t just reduce the upfront costs from a complete rehaul, but reduces the investment needed on new hardware, software, and human resources and helps estimate the costs in advance.

Incremental migration: Brownfield cloud migration allows you to move your subsystems step-by-step, which can help in reducing the risks associated with a large-scale migration.

Slow disruptive: Brownfield cloud migration doesn’t cause a major disruption to your ongoing business operations.

Cons of Brownfield Cloud Migration Strategy

Retain limitations: Brownfield migration strategy retains the limitations of the original infrastructure, making it challenging to fully leverage the benefits of cloud computing.

Rigid: On-premise systems can be rigid and require purchasing more computing capacity when needed, resulting in under-utilized resources when not in use. This limitation can persist even after migrating to the cloud, making it difficult to fully optimize infrastructure.

Complexity: Brownfield cloud migration strategy can be complex due to the need to integrate existing on-premise systems with cloud infrastructure. This requires careful planning and execution to ensure that all systems work together seamlessly.

Slow migration: The migration process can be slow, as subsystems must be moved step-by-step to avoid disrupting critical business processes. This can be time-consuming and may result in delays to existing project timelines.

Greenfield vs. Brownfield cloud migration: Which one is your winner?

Does your company majorly seek,

Customization? Then, go for Greenfield cloud migration.

Greenfield migration will provide you with a higher degree of customization as it allows for the development of solutions that meet specific business requirements.

Brownfield migration is limited by the existing infrastructure and legacy systems, making it difficult to achieve the same level of customization.

Scalability? Again, go for Greenfield cloud migration.

Greenfield migration enables enterprises to build scalable applications from scratch, while brownfield migration may be limited by the scalability of the legacy systems.

With greenfield migration, enterprises can leverage the cloud to easily scale their infrastructure up or down, while with brownfield migration, the legacy systems may need to be modified or replaced to achieve scalability.

Familiarity? Choose Brownfield migration.

Brownfield migration is advantageous when your staff is already familiar with the legacy systems, making it easier and faster to adapt to the new environment.

Greenfield migration may require a longer learning curve as everything is new, and your teams may need to get used to the cloud options.

Affordability? Brownfield cloud migration again.

Brownfield migration can be more cost-effective, as only certain processes need to be migrated, and the existing infrastructure can be leveraged.

Greenfield migration can be costly, as everything needs to be built from scratch, and the migration process can be expensive.

Ease of management? Choose Brownfield cloud migration.

Managing on-premise infrastructure is often easier than managing cloud computing infrastructure, as basic technical knowledge is sufficient to manage and update resources.

Managing cloud infrastructure requires special skills and knowledge of various cloud applications.

Summary

TLDR: Greenfield migration is best for your company if you’re looking for better customization and scalability. But if familiarity, affordability, and ease of management are your demands, then go ahead with Brownfield cloud migration. Each company has unique requirements. What works for another may not necessarily work for you. If you still have any questions about migrating your infrastructure to the cloud, feel free to reach out to us.