Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks: Why Your AEM Migration Needs More Than Good Intentions
Well now, let me tell you a story that'll help you understand what we're dealing with here. Picture this: a teenage girl sitting at the kitchen table with her father—a grizzled farmer who's spent his whole life working the land in rural Georgia. She's trying to help him install some software on his computer, and bless his heart, he's got this baffled expression on his face like she's speaking ancient Greek. He knows farming like the back of his hand, but this computer business? That's a whole
different world. That's exactly what happens when organizations try to migrate their Adobe Experience Manager platform to the cloud without properly addressing their legacy code. They know their current system works—they've been using it for years—but moving to AEM as a Cloud Service and implementing an edge delivery network? That requires a completely different way of thinking.
The Legacy Code Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About If your organization has been running AEM for any length of time, you've accumulated what we call technical debt. That's a fancy way of saying you've got custom code, third-party integrations, and outdated practices that made perfect sense five or ten years ago but don't play nice with modern cloud-native standards. Classic AEM is a large, monolithic application with the same limitations as any legacy non-cloud-native platform. Over the years, your development teams have built custom components, created workarounds for specific business needs, and integrated with systems that may not even exist anymore. All of that code is sitting there, and it's not going to magically work when you flip the switch to the cloud.
Understanding What AEM Migration Actually Means When we talk about AEM migration, we're not just talking about moving files from one server to another. AEM as a Cloud Service is fundamentally different from the on-premises version you've been running. Adobe refactored the entire monolithic AEM application into a set of modular components and services that are cloud native. Core concepts like replication, asset computing, and repository services have been completely reworked. This refactoring brings significant benefits—robust on-demand storage, auto-scaling, fast rendering, automatic updates, and protection against cloud disasters. But it also means your code needs to follow new rules. The Best Practices Analyzer tool can assess your current AEM implementation and identify areas that aren't following AEM best practices, but understanding what to do with that information requires expertise.
The Edge Delivery Network Advantage Now, here's where things get interesting. When you're planning your AEM migration, you should also be thinking about implementing an edge delivery network. AEM as a Cloud Service comes with an integrated CDN designed to reduce latency by delivering cacheable content from edge nodes close to the user's browser. AEM Edge Delivery Services take this concept even further, offering performance improvements and perfect Lighthouse scores. The speed efficiency goes beyond content management, featuring a global content delivery network and built-in optimization. Edge Delivery Services support integration with all major CDNs, ensuring that web pages are served from the closest geographical location to your users.
The Technical Debt Reality Let's talk about what technical debt actually looks like in an AEM context. Maybe you've got custom Sling Models that need updating for cloud compatibility. Perhaps your resource type mappings and annotations need modification. You might have deprecated APIs that no longer work, or configurations that made sense for on-premises deployment but create problems in the cloud. Legacy mode exists in AEM specifically for customers with custom interfaces based on legacy or deprecated code that has been moved out in compatibility packages. That tells you something right there—Adobe knows this is a widespread problem. Refactoring code to follow cloud-native standards offers the most optimization potential but requires significant time and expertise. It's not just about making your code run in the cloud; it's about re-architecting applications to actually take advantage of cloud-native features. That's the difference between migrating and modernizing.
Why This Matters to Your Business I've seen organizations try to tackle AEM migration themselves, and it rarely goes smoothly. They underestimate the complexity, don't properly assess their technical
debt, and end up with a cloud deployment that doesn't deliver the expected benefits. The migration was designed to enhance scalability, reduce operational expenses, and future-proof digital infrastructure, but without proper planning and execution, you don't achieve those goals. The Cloud Acceleration Manager divides AEM migration into three phases: Readiness, Implementation, and Go-Live. Each phase has critical steps that require both technical expertise and business judgment. During the Readiness phase, you need to evaluate your current environment, identify customizations and third-party integrations, and create a detailed migration plan. The Implementation phase involves code refactoring, content migration, deployment, and rigorous testing. The Go-Live phase requires careful monitoring and support.
Getting the Help You Need Remember that farmer trying to install software? He's not stupid—he's just working outside his area of expertise. The smart move isn't to fumble through it alone; it's to get help from someone who knows what they're doing. The same principle applies to AEM migration. Your IT team might be excellent at maintaining your current AEM implementation, but migrating to the cloud while addressing technical debt and implementing an edge delivery network requires specialized knowledge. A competent consulting and IT services firm brings experience from multiple migrations, understands common pitfalls, and can design solutions that actually deliver the promised benefits.
Moving Forward AEM migration isn't just a technical project—it's a strategic initiative that affects your ability to deliver digital experiences, respond to market changes, and compete effectively. Legacy code compatibility and technical debt are real challenges that require real expertise to address properly. If you're looking at migrating your AEM platform to the cloud and implementing an edge delivery network, take the time to do it right. Assess your technical debt honestly, plan your refactoring carefully, and get help from folks who've been down this road before. Because just like that farmer needs his daughter's help with the
computer, sometimes the smartest thing you can do is admit you need expertise that you don't have in-house. The cloud promises significant benefits, but only if you migrate properly. Don't let legacy code and technical debt turn your AEM migration into a frustrating exercise that doesn't deliver results. With the right approach and the right partners, you can modernize your platform, leverage edge delivery for better performance, and position your organization for long-term success.
