vs lift-and-shift SIs
They move the box.
We open it.
A re-hosting program relocates your sealed crate of logic to newer infrastructure — carefully, expensively, and without ever looking inside. The complexity that made you call them survives the move intact.
Side by side
Relocation versus a manifest
| Lift-and-shift / SI re-hosting | PalmDigitalz | |
|---|---|---|
| What moves | The sealed crate — logic relocated to newer infrastructure | What’s inside — every rule extracted, itemized, and traced to its source lines |
| What you learn | The crate arrives unopened — the COBOL is still COBOL, the dependencies still undocumented | A manifest — the next program starts from evidence, not a mystery |
| Pricing | Bodies and hours | Priced on outcomes — the deliverable is evidence, not effort |
| When it fits | The data center is closing and the deadline is physics — moving the box is the job | You want the retirement clock to actually stop, not change address |
| Working together | Estate-scale delivery — they handle it well | Palm supplies the deterministic ground truth their teams build on |
Weighing more than these two? The full vendor matrix — every serious option, refereed.
The honest take
Relocation is not modernization
Lift-and-shift has a place: when the data center is closing and the deadline is physics, moving the box is the job. But it is relocation, not modernization — the COBOL is still COBOL, the dependencies still undocumented, the retirement clock still ticking. You’ve paid to ship the problem.
Palm is the inventory the move never included. Every rule extracted, itemized, and traced to its source lines — so the next program starts from a manifest, not a mystery. And because the deliverable is evidence, not effort, the engagement is priced on outcomes instead of bodies.
Many of our best engagements run alongside an SI: they handle the estate-scale delivery, Palm supplies the deterministic ground truth their teams build on.