Shalini Manokaran
Author
When businesses make a move to the cloud, the performance of the application and the cost associated with it remains the primary focus. When you modernize your workloads, you customize them to make them the right fit for your business needs.
Application Modernization programs your existing applications and aligns them with your company’s current requirements while addressing the changing business needs. There are numerous benefits that this process offers.
Continue Reading
Some of the benefits of the Application Modernization are
- Reduced cost
- Scalability
- Enhanced security
- DevOps automation
- Reduced development time
- Efficient troubleshooting and bug fixing
- Reduced time to market
The cost savings you make with App Modernization are quite immense and can certainly impact the sales and profit of your business. Some of the case studies show that the average cost savings based on mid-market are as follows.
- 50% reduction in virtual application server cost
- 65% reduction in the time to production
- 75% reduction in reported production incidents
- 80% reduction in IT administration cost for applications in Azure
More accurate cost savings and ROI can be estimated based on the cloud footprints of businesses. App Modernization provides flexibility and space for innovation in the future. Application Modernization leverages the full potential of the software investments you have made while creating opportunities for numerous technical innovations.
Migration Readiness Assessment
If you plan to migrate an application to the cloud, you must be ready with this assessment. Each step in this process gives insights that will help your business select a path that’s just right for a specific application.
Seven components to scrutinize before beginning the Application Modernization process
1. Analyze your objectives
Before you initiate the modernization, you need to be ready with data that can help you set strategic goals. Find out the high-level business objectives for your organization. Know what the timeline is, who the stakeholders are, and identify the business units that are being impacted by this process.
Each organization should have an established baseline with a track developer time, a help desk ticketing system, and a record of the repetitive tasks. It’d be tedious to understand the business objective without these details.
Whether you want to increase your revenue or productivity or reduce certain costs, you need to have clarity on what your business goals are and the KPIs you’d be using for measuring progress. To get clear and detailed insights on all of these, a business analyst can help you establish the baseline details for your business.
2. Plan your migration path
Since there are multiple paths you can take for each application, you’ll have to determine the best fit option for the application to modernize. Your project may require your application to
- Re-hosted
- Re-platformed
- Repurchased
- Retained
- Refactored
- Retired
3. Assess your experience level
Assess the experience level your staff has with these migration tools, technologies, and operating models. Curate a plan to bridge the gap if you find any. Prepare educational plans for your employees to get them familiar and comfortable with the new tools and consulting services as you strengthen your internal resources.
4. Determine the landing zone
Find out how modernizing an application will impact licensing, architecture, connectivity, disaster recovery or the current configuration.
5. Evaluate your application
When you consider an application for modernization, here are some of the factors that you need to consider
- Prioritization: Check the level of existing priorities
- Dependency mapping: Check the application’s use cases, workflows, and automation?
- Performance analysis: The application’s server utilization and the connectivity needs must be analyzed.
- Data discovery: Find the application’s required data structure.
- Maintenance: The application requirement for enhancements and ongoing support in the future.
6. Target security and compliance
When you update an application, certain security requirements need to be considered. And when you modernize an application, how will it be managed?
Each business has its own set of security models that need to be enforced. Engineers need to evaluate how they can secure their applications. Security testing is of two types when it comes to modernization projects that leverage container platforms.
- Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
- Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
Each container can be scanned when they are under the development stage and also while in production for security updates, aged versions, or any known vulnerabilities. When there are no virtual hosts, these security controls are embedded directly into the application. This in turn allows for automated remediation and updates at the node level.
7. Consider your operating model
A new paradigm may need to be implemented to be compliant with addressing the changes in patching, backup, asset management, and configuration. Before initiating the Application Modernization, you need to know that not everything can be done at once. Finding and selecting the right partner to assist you and help you in the entire process will enable you to make full investment returns.
Assembling the right team for App Modernization should be your next step!
Once you move the infrastructure to the cloud, make the most of the benefits through Application Modernization.
To ensure successful Application Modernization, the following skill sets are required.
- Architect
- Tech Lead
- Business Analyst / Quality Assurance
- Data Engineer
- Full Stack developer
At AVASOFT, our Application modernization services team has professionals and experts who can administer the entire App Modernization project for you. We can also assist you in the planning phase, execution, support and maintenance, data migration, and integration.
