Application Modernization Strategy: How to Prepare

Once businesses make the journey to the cloud, their focus then shifts to the performance of their applications and the costs associated with them. Modernizing your workloads means customizing them to fit your business’s individual needs.

Application modernization takes your existing applications and programs them to align with your company’s current and changing business needs. This process provides several benefits, including:

Scalability
Enhanced security
DevOps automation
Reduced development time
More efficient troubleshooting and bug fixes
Reduced costs
Reduced time to market

The savings associated with app modernization are substantial and can impact both your top and bottom line. Here are the average cost savings based on mid-market case studies:

50% reduction in virtual application server costs
65% reduction in the time to production
75% reduction in reported production incidents
80% reduction in IT administration costs for applications in Azure

The amount of cost savings that a company can expect will depend on their footprint in the cloud.

App modernization provides companies with flexibility to provide space for innovation well into the future. This process extends the lifetime software investments while taking advantage of the many technical innovations available today.

Get Prepared with a Migration Readiness Assessment

This assessment provides the dimensions that would be impacted if you were to take a specific app and proceed to migrate it to the cloud. Each step provides crucial information that will help your business select the migration path that’s right for each individual application.

Here are the seven components your business should scrutinize before beginning your application modernization process:

Analyze Your Objectives

What are the high-level business objectives? What is the timeline? Who are the stakeholders? What business units are being impacted?

It’s important that companies looking to initiate an app modernization strategy have established data to help them set goals. Every organization should track developer time, maintain a help desk ticketing system, and record repetitive manual tasks to establish your baseline. Without a baseline, you’re unable to understand your objectives.

Are you looking to increase your revenue or productivity? Reduce certain costs? What is your goal and what are the KPI’s you’re going to use to measure your progress? Here, a business analyst should be involved to ensure these are clearly established.

Plan Your Migration Path

There are multiple paths you can take for each app. You’ll need to consider which will be the best option for the app you’re planning to modernize. You project may require that your app is:

Re-hosted
Re-platformed
Repurchased
Refactored
Retained
Retired

You’ll need to determine which path is best for your application modernization process and what that path is going to look like.

Assess Your Experience Level

What is the staff’s current experience level with these migration technologies, tools, and operating models? If there is a gap, what is the plan to bridge this gap?

This could mean educational plans to get employees comfortable working with new tools or consulting services to help augment internal resources.

Determine the Landing Zone

How will modernizing an application impact licensing, connectivity, architecture, Disaster Recovery, or configurations as they currently exist?

Evaluate Your Application

What applications are being considered for modernization?

When we dive into an application that’s being considered for modernization, there are many factors we need to consider:

Prioritization: What levels of priorities exist? How does each application align to a prioritization category?
Dependency mapping: What are the application’s use cases, workflows, and automations?
Performance analysis: What are the application’s server utilization and connectivity needs?
Data discovery: What are the application’s required data structures?
Maintenance: What will the application require for future functionality enhancements and ongoing support?

Target Security and Compliance

There are always security requirements that need to be considered when applications are being updated. How will these be managed in their modernized state?

Every business has a certain security model that will need to be enforced and often reported on for compliance, among other reasons. Without an OS, engineers need to reevaluate how to secure their applications. Modernization projects leveraging container platforms will usually include two types of security testing in each deployed container:

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)

This allows for each container to be scanned for security updates, aged versions, or known vulnerabilities both while under development and while in production. In the absence of a virtual host, these security controls are embedded into the application itself which allows for automated remediation and updates at the node level.

Consider Your Operating Model

How will patching, back up, asset management, configuration changes be addressed moving forward? A new paradigm may need to be implemented to be compliant.

These details cannot be glossed over before beginning the application modernization process. For those who may be overwhelmed by beginning this process, it’s important to note that in app modernization, you don’t have to do everything at once. Finding the right partner to assist you or administer the entire process will ensure you’re reaching the maximum ROI on your technology investments.

Next Steps: Assembling the Right Team for App Modernization

Once your infrastructure is in the cloud, it’s important to take advantage of the benefits the cloud offers through application modernization. To ensure the application modernization process is a success, multiple skillsets are required, including a:

Tech Lead

Project Manager

Business Analyst

Data Engineer

Full Stack Developer

At Arraya, our Application Services team has the experts needed to administer the entire app modernization process. We can assist with the planning phase, execution, support and maintenance, or data migration and integration.

To learn more about app modernization, take advantage of our on-demand 2021 Tech Summit session:

IaaS: Now What?

Here, we walk through real-world examples, from building new apps to modernizing existing apps with the right strategy.

Application Modernization Virtual Series

To learn more about the application modernization process, check out Arraya’s 5-part Application Modernization virtual series on-demand. These sessions outline the steps and strategy for a successful app modernization journey – one that will allow your organization to truly realize the benefits of digital transformation.

Sessions include: