Application modernisation is the process of taking existing legacy applications and modernising their platform infrastructure, internal architecture, and/or features.
When we talk about application modernisation today, the discussion tends to focus on monolithic on-premises applications (often these are outdated and maintained using waterfall development processes). While these traditional development processes are too slow and complicated to iterate, the key is how these can be brought into cloud architecture and release patterns, namely microservices DevOps.
By tackling the monolith and breaking it down into microservices DevOps frameworks, you can increase the velocity of new feature deployments, enhance efficiencies and re-imagine existing workflows.
There are two traditional limiting issues from traditional IT, with the combination of these factors driving the desire to modernise monolithic applications.
Firstly they are difficult to update, and secondly they are difficult and expensive to scale.
Architectural reasons underpin the difficulty of updating monolithic apps. If all of an application’s components are shipped together, adding features becomes problematic and costly given the overhead of complexity and integration challenges.
This also plays into the difficulty of scaling. If just one component of an app is facing load and performance challenges, it can become necessary to scale up the entire app only to serve the most-demanding single component. This promises considerable wastage, time and expense.
When an application is modernised to a microservices architecture, often using container technology, components will therefore be smaller and loosely coupled. This brings the distinct advantage of deploying and scaling independently of each other. For many, this is the true value of application modernisation.
While the cost and complexity of updating monolithic applications is a key driver, these same factors can also prove key challenges and barriers impacting your approach to application modernisation.
What about a simple lift and shift approach?
Simply lifting and shifting all legacy applications to the cloud is difficult to justify. This is especially the case when you have already made a significant investment in on-premises infrastructure.
In addition to this, the true value of modernisation is found in restructuring the application to take better advantage of cloud models.
Why lift and shift when it doesn’t offer a strategic advantage?
Take stock of your existing IT infrastructure. And most importantly question where you will get the most value from application modernisation. Evaluate how critical the application is to the customer experience and the future of your business.
Taking an inventory of what you have is arguably the most obvious place to start. Qualify each of these applications in terms of the difficulty and cost of modernisation, with the value of modernisation.
Those that are high value and low effort to modernise, will be a no-brainer. This is where you should begin your application modernisation project. The difficult decisions come with those that present significant challenges but would offer crucial value if modernised.
But remember, it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing strategy from the very beginning. The project can be done strategically and in stages. Learn more about your journey to the cloud.
Having run a full audit of your existing applications and by understanding the potential value of modernisation it is important to choose the right approach. This could consist of:
As industry experts, DeeperThanBlue provides a full consultative model for your application modernisation journey. We have access to a full market range of cloud environments to suit the specific needs and requirements of your business. If you’re keen to lean more, please get in touch today.
An essential aspect of a strategic approach to application modernisation is to understand and opt for the best technologies to facilitate your journey to the cloud.
Of course, the public cloud will be a critical part of your application modernisation strategy, but that doesn’t mean that private, hybrid and multi-cloud strategies don’t have their part to play. In fact they are essential for security, latency and architectural reasons.
If for example you aren’t ready to go straight to the public cloud, other cloud models can help solve any complexities with where certain workloads need to be housed depending on their unique characteristics.
Containerisation enables an application to be packaged in consistent, lightweight ways that they can run consistently across desktop, cloud, or on-premises environments. It involves encapsulating or packaging up software code and all its dependencies so that it can run uniformly and consistently on any infrastructure. The flexibility it offers is extremely beneficial when charting your path forward in the cloud.
Your developers can create and deploy applications faster and more securely. Often referred to as “lightweight” containers share the machine’s operating system kernel and don’t require the overhead of associating an operating system within each application. They are inherently smaller in capacity than a VM and require less start-up time. What this means is that far more containers can be run on the same compute capacity as a single VM. Higher server efficiencies will be found, therefore reducing server and licensing costs.
With containerisation, applications can be written once and can run anywhere, promising such benefits as fault isolation, ease of management and security for example.
Much of the acceleration of containerisation as a viable aspect of any application modernisation strategy has been enabled by the emergence of the open source Docker Engine. Docker enables developers to package applications easily into containers, making it easier, simpler and safer to build, deploy and manage containers. The best way to think of Docker is as a toolkit to enable your developers to build, deploy, run, update and stop containers using simple commands and essential automation.
This is vital for the future of your organisation. Distributing, controlling and analysing the APIs that connect applications and data across your business and across clouds is fundamental for the growth, flexibility and agility of your business.
Without structured API management you simply wouldn’t be able to respond to the rapid changes in consumer demand or have the agility to grow and scale in line with market forces. Learn more about API management and the essential metrics for success.
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