Anyone who has moved houses knows there is nothing worse than hauling boxes and boxes of stuff, only to unpack it all on the other end and discover that the beloved furniture and knick-knacks do not work in the new place. Portability is a tricky concept, and moving applications to the cloud is not much different than moving house. Just as every home is uniquely suited to certain décor pieces and not to others, every cloud requires certain specifications. The code and configurations that worked like a charm in one cloud environment suddenly look like a bull in a china shop when moved to a new cloud.
One of the most advertised benefits of moving applications to the cloud is the so-called portability that the cloud environment offers. The claim is that enterprises can easily switch cloud jurisdictions whenever they need to scale up or add features. Portability is indeed an important factor for businesses concerned about vendor lock-in, as moving applications into a new environment can involve a lot of heavy lifting.