For most organizations, the shift to modern apps – running on a containerized cloud-based infrastructure – is the key to unlocking the extra productivity, flexibility and responsiveness required to stay ahead of a market that’s evolving more rapidly than ever.
Modern apps allow you to take full advantage of the productivity-boosting potential of the cloud.
They make it easier to implement new features and technologies, faster.
And because they’re more efficient than legacy apps, they can be an important tool in the struggle against unplanned downtime.
A recent study found that migrating to cloud-based microservices can improve cost efficiency by as much as 29% and improve productivity by 38%. A 2022 paper by MIT found that the adoption of cloud technology was associated with an up to a 7% increase in sales.
What is application modernization?
Application modernization transforms existing apps to run on cloud architectures in a way that unlocks greater productivity and agility.
Done correctly, cloud application modernization unlocks new business capabilities, accelerates innovation, and reduces technical debt.
Elements of cloud application modernization include:
- innovations such as containerization, serverless architectures, the use of DevOps to accelerate the development process and so on.
- increased use of microservices to allow apps and services to be quickly redeployed and reconfigured independently of one another
Successful application modernization creates a more agile, robust, configurable and responsive IT ecosystem.
It allows teams to build, test, and release new functionality without depending on other teams.
This in turn builds a culture of ownership and autonomy and compartmentalizes complexity.
If there is a failure, something inevitable from time to time in any sufficiently complex system, this failure is localized to specific services. This minimizes the impact on the rest of the system, maximizing uptime for the whole application.
Cloud app modernization also makes scaling to meet spikes in demand less expensive and more efficient. Rather than scaling an entire app — as would be necessary in a legacy architecture — the enterprise can scale just the relevant micro-services.
But that doesn’t mean that companies can simply hit a button labeled “modernize” and wait for the productivity gains. A recent survey of CIOs found that 90% had experienced at least one disrupted or failed modernization project.
To ensure the best results, companies need expert advice on how to plan, navigate, engineer and execute cloud app modernization in an accelerated, low-risk, incremental way.
How to master the complexity of modernizing
The switch to modern applications has the potential to unlock massive productivity gains. But it’s also complex and, without the right approach and the right safeguards, can be risky.
The answer is to work with an external partner that has the experience, the technology and the skilled staff required to make your cloud migration and app modernization project a success. In a tight talent market, working with an external partner gets you instant access to the skills you need, without a lengthy set-up or prohibitive up-front overheads.
How can an external application modernization and cloud migration specialist help you get the most out of your investment in cloud technology, while avoiding potential pitfalls?
The right partner will help you analyze your technology ecosystem at the very start of the modernization process. Using the data from this exercise, your partner should be able to identify the apps you can modernize first, for the biggest immediate positive impact on business and IT performance.
The right cloud app modernization partner can also help you:
- analyze your needs and goals against your current capabilities to develop a robust business plan
- develop a robust and data-driven roadmap, so that your modernization journey proceeds in a way that is seamless and efficient
- use data, category expertise and specialist technology to ensure that app modernization drives business transformation and helps you hit your goals
- design and optimize your application architecture for your goals and your cloud infrastructure to get maximum performance and flexibility
- tailor recommendations and configurations to the business goals, to achieve the performance balance of cost and performance
- capture app data across your entire tech ecosystem, to ensure that your apps always run at peak performance
- collect data natively, with functions built into the app infrastructure, eliminating the need for multiple, app-specific third-party or proprietary agents
A cloud application modernization case study
Working with an expert cloud specialist to do the due diligence involved in the process outlined above helps to ensure that you won’t be one of the 90% of companies that experience a failed or sub-standard cloud migration.
We work collaboratively with our customers to identify workloads that are good candidates for modernization within 2 weeks. We help companies understand the modernization options available to them and how to get the highest possible returns for lowest effort invested.
Sunstone, Cloudreach’s application modernization software platform, also provides dynamic, real-time visibility into your cloud estate. By providing real-time and historical insights into the performance of individual apps and the system as a whole, Sunstone helps you make the right application modernization decision and keep your apps running at peak performance.
Working with one recent client — a leading global media organization — Cloudreach achieved the following outcomes:
- our consultants used Sunstone product to rapidly discover 100 nodes across AWS Inventory, Service and Application data
- of the discovered nodes, 17 EC2 instances were identified as self-hosted proprietary or OS software offerings that could move to AWS Managed Services
- Cloudreach assessed the data for AWS Managed Service offerings which included Grafana, Prometheus, OpsWorks, ElasticSearch, Amazon MQ, Amazon EKS, DocumentDB, RDS and Elasticache.
- findings were presented back to the client and modernization candidate resource data was handed over for possible action
To find out how app modernization can help them achieve their business and technology goals, companies can do a test drive. An application modernization test drive is a lightweight offering that provides several standard deployment blueprints into a managed cloud landing zone. It adopts AWS best practices such as multi-account structure and role-based IAM access policy implementation.
The specialist should work with you to discover the best app on which to do a technical review of dependences and identify the best way forward for the highest return. They should take you through the entire process of architectural design, app development and deployment. And by the end of the process, you will have a very good idea of how app modernization can help your business.
Cloudreach is the world’s leading independent multi-cloud services company, specializing in cloud application development and cloud migration. We have the experts, the tools and the technology required to make your cloud migration a success.
Get in touch today to discuss your cloud migration plans and to discuss an app modernization test drive.
