Incremental Migration Strategies

1 post · Apr 2023 – Jan 2025

What this trail covers

Vercel's platform supports incremental migration strategies, enabling businesses to transition to new or updated systems with minimized risk and downtime. This includes detailed guidance on vertical (feature-by-feature) and horizontal (user-by-user) migration approaches, as well as specific considerations for frontend and web frontend migrations using reverse proxies and Edge Middleware. The platform facilitates phased traffic migration, allowing for gradual validation of technical solutions. This post details how to incrementally migrate from monolithic platforms like Salesforce Commerce Cloud to a headless architecture using Next.js and Vercel's Edge Middleware for traffic control and session synchronization.

All Vercel trails

Jan 2025Headless Salesforce: An incremental migration from monolith to composableThis post details an incremental migration strategy from Salesforce Commerce Cloud to a headless architecture using Next.js and Vercel. It outlines technical strategies including starting with the frontend, using Edge Middleware for traffic control and reverse proxying, synchronizing user sessions via encrypted cookies and JWTs, preserving SEO rankings with redirects and canonical tags, testing in real-world conditions with sandbox environments and preview deployments, and mitigating Salesforce API challenges through strategic data fetching and caching with Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR). The post quantifies performance gains (TTFB, FCP, LCP, INP, CLS), productivity improvements (deployment/rollback times, feature flags, team retention), and business impact (cart abandonment, mobile conversion rates, incremental sales, zero downtime).
Aug 2023Why all application migrations should be incrementalThis post introduces and elaborates on incremental migration strategies as a solution to mitigate risks associated with large system transitions. It contrasts incremental migrations with 'big bang' migrations, highlighting the benefits of reduced risk, earlier validation, and downtime-free transitions. The post details two primary incremental approaches: vertical (feature-by-feature) and horizontal (user-by-user), and discusses their trade-offs, particularly concerning inter-system data access. It also provides specific guidance on frontend migrations, including the use of reverse proxies and Vercel's Edge Middleware for phased traffic migration.
Aug 2023Sonos migrated to Vercel to unlock new levels of efficiency and confidence for their developers. | Customers | VercelThis post details Sonos' successful incremental migration of over ten properties to Vercel, moving from a self-hosted AWS infrastructure to Vercel's platform. Key technical improvements include reducing build times from 20 minutes to 5 minutes, enabling support for Next.js 12/13 features like Edge Middleware and ISR, resolving cache management issues that caused redirect errors, and improving observability and debugging through Vercel's unified platform. The migration leveraged Vercel's Preview Deployments for seamless cutovers and resulted in a 10% lift in performance and improved mobile Lighthouse scores.
Apr 2023Incremental migration from WordPress for a dev-first approach | Customers | VercelThis post details how Gearbox, a web development agency, uses Vercel and Next.js to facilitate incremental migrations from WordPress. It highlights the use of Edge Middleware for managing redirects and masking URLs during the transition, allowing new posts to rewrite to an existing WordPress blog while masking the URL. This enables phased migration and scope management, demonstrating a practical application of Vercel's platform for gradual system evolution.
Advertisement