In 2021, a large-scale migration of roughly 340 applications from a private data center to AWS was executed under an aggressive timeline. The original estimate was 18 months, later reduced to 9. The deadline was met by applying the right strategy to each workload. Around 40% were lifted and shifted for speed, 12% required full refactoring, and 8% were retired, delivering outsized cost savings. Choosing the wrong AWS migration strategy remains one of the costliest mistakes in cloud projects. Refactoring unnecessarily inflates budgets, while lifting and shifting without foresight embeds long-term technical debt into higher cloud costs. This article breaks down the five AWS migration strategies, when to use each, a practical comparison framework, and a few contrarian insights often overlooked. If a move to AWS is on the horizon, consider this a practical playbook. Why AWS migration strategy matters more than the migration itself The migration is the easy part.…