App Mod Playbook by kourtnyshaw

App Mod Playbook Building a Successful Application Modernization Strategy

App Mod Playbook

Contents

Introduction

Start With Why

Build or Buy?

Page 3

Page 5

Page 9

04 Pick a Cloud Platform Page 11

05 Finalize a Plan & Budget Page 15

App Mod Playbook

Introduction “In 2019, 41% of modernization efforts failed/stalled and 69% came with higher-than-estimated cloud costs.” Source: IDG Research

We designed this eBook to help IT leaders build a successful app mod strategy in five easy steps. It leverages Polaris Solutions’ century-plus of combined experience building custom software, modernizing legacy apps, and empowering IT teams to transform their organizations. Learn more at polaris.llc

App Mod Playbook

Every 3 Months… As new generations make up a growing percentage of every organization’s HR and user bases, today’s IT leaders view organizational agility and application modernization as critical priorities.

That’s how often Gen Z IT leaders will be driving innovation and selfdisruption by 2024

• Application = any custom software For the purposes of this eBook, “application” is not limited to enduser-facing products or services. It can also include integration between backend systems or batch processes running on a mainframe.

App Mod Playbook

Start With Why

App Mod Playbook

Start With Why Identify why you need to modernize in order to avoid a common app mod mistake: starting with technology. Otherwise, you might simply want your new software to do exactly what the old one did. But approaching app mod from the perspective of technology alone can lead you to overlook critical business priorities. To start with priorities instead of technology: •

Complete an App Mod Self-Assessment (pg. 8)

•

Conduct an internal audit and discovery interviews (pg. 9)

Don’t start with technology 6

App Mod Playbook

App Mod Self-Assessment Q: How much does your legacy application cost your business? Yes, the answer is complicated. But quantify the hidden costs of not modernizing and you’ll be left with a powerful response in the age-old “if it ain’t broke, why fix it?” debate.

How many hours/week are spent on tasks that could be automated? Extrapolate from that to an annual cost.

When hiring for IT, are you limited to less-than-ideal candidates because of your technology? Are team members leaving because they don’t want to work with it?

Even if your software is meeting the needs of customers today, is it flexible enough to adapt as needs change in the coming years (or even months)?

Is your software built on another platform–hardware, thirdparty software, or an older operating system–that’s outdated? How much does that cost to maintain per year?

Has your market or organization changed as a result of COVID-19? Have you been able to adapt?

App Mod Playbook

Discovery Interviews Embrace the people who use your legacy system to make not just your technical stack–but your entire offering or service–better. At this stage, you can conduct an audit and discovery interviews yourself or enlist the help of an app mod partner.

The Benefits of a Third-Party Perspective – It’s Basic Psychology

People give clearer, better advice to others than to themselves. Using VR, researchers placed people on both sides of a counseling session, as themselves and as Sigmund Freud. When participants embodied Dr. Freud, they had better outcomes than participants who simply tried to imagine their situation from a third perspective. A modernization partner can help you uncover unexpected wins for your organization’s long-term success and future readiness. Source: Scientific Reports

App Mod Playbook

Build or Buy

App Mod Playbook

Decide to Build or Buy If your app is closely tied to a core product or service, the wise choice is almost always custom IP over a SaaS tool.

Buy Off the Shelf Organizations that buy, or build some custom code on top of another product, almost always have to ask employees or customers to change behavior to match the software purchased. In addition, if your legacy solution brought you a strategic advantage, you can’t retain that using software your competitors also have access to.

Build a Custom Application Building doesn’t mean you have to go it alone or pull valuable team members off other projects. Look for an experienced app mod partner and you’ll be able to have the best of both worlds: software customized to your priorities that’s also delivered at budget, on time, and done right the first time. © Polaris LLC. All rights reserved. Disclosure is subject to the restriction on the title page of this document.

App Mod Playbook

Pick a Cloud Platform

App Mod Playbook

The Cloud Wars

Market Share As of Q1 2020, Amazon has the majority of the market at 32%. Microsoft comes in second at 18%, followed by Google at 8%.

Amazon

Other

Microsoft Google Source: Synergy Research Group

App Mod Playbook

Comparing Clouds Here’s one reason Microsoft Azure comes out on top for us. Heated competition between the ‘Big Three’ has made made comparing prices…well, cloudy. So, Polaris conducted an in-depth price comparison to test the conventional wisdom that AWS is cheaper than Azure. We were surprised to find that–with the Azure Hybrid Benefit applied–Azure was slightly cheaper. Pros Microsoft Azure Amazon Web Services Google Cloud Platform

Cons

• More mature enterprise features & robust hybrid cloud offering • Slight lead over AWS in value (with Azure Hybrid Benefit)

• May lose edge as result of spending less than Amazon on R&D ($17B vs. $36B in 2019)

• Early to cloud • Current market leader

• Risk of competition • Microsoft technologies aren’t well represented

• Recent strategic partnership with IBM could strengthen both companies in hybrid cloud

• Less mature enterprise features overall

App Mod Playbook

4 Questions to Find Your Cloud

As the ‘Big Three’ try to outprice one another, take the opportunity to allow your decision to also be informed by these non-cost-related considerations.

How easily will the solution integrate with current infrastructure? Moving 100% to the cloud is not ideal for many midsized/large organizations. If some of your applications or databases still make sense on-premises, consider Microsoft for their long-standing focus on hybrid and multi-cloud solutions. How large or active is the community around your platform? If your community is large, extremely engaged, or poised for growth, pick a provider who makes it easy to upgrade as needed. Clearent, a credit card processing company and Polaris client, utilizes the Azure SQL Database hyperscale service tier to automatically scale to handle annual transactions of 500 million+. How mature is your platform? Google Cloud Platform tends to be the go-to option for startups and cloud-native applications, whereas Azure and AWS have historically been trusted by more mature organizations with legacy systems. What’s the risk of competition with your cloud provider? There’s one surprising factor that can be overlooked if you pick a provider based on technical capabilities and pricing alone: potential competition with your provider. As Amazon threatens to move into more and more verticals including healthcare and finance, many organizations must weigh that risk.

App Mod Playbook

Finalize a Plan & Budget

App Mod Playbook

Lift-and-Shift – Level 1

Comparing Dev Approaches Any successful modernization will require leaders to carefully select from these key approaches.

If you’re hosted in on-prem virtual machines (VMs), the simplest approach is to move those VMs to a cloud provider. Architecture and design don’t have to change, and infrastructure concerns will be familiar to existing staff. But keep in mind: this approach can miss many of the biggest business benefits of app mod, like improving application design, scalability, and resilience.

Refactor Monoliths – Level 2 Refactoring will restructure and enhance existing code and break apart legacy apps into more modern, cloud-native architecture, all without changing external behavior. Benefits include enablement of event-driven patterns, loose coupling, better scalability, and new channels for connecting with third parties through microservices. The cons? You’ll need a new, more regimented development pipeline, more complex infrastructure and dev environment, and even new delivery practices and team structures.

Containers – Level 3 Containers allow refactored applications to be hosted on virtually any infrastructure that supports containerized apps. This option offers all the benefits of Refactor Monoliths plus it means applications will always be deployed into known environments with no infrastructure surprises. Containers will make you cloudprovider-agnostic. They also come with all the cons of Refactor Monoliths, plus you’ll find you need highly skilled technical staff to create, manage, and maintain container structures. © Polaris LLC. All rights reserved. Disclosure is subject to the restriction on the title page of this document.

App Mod Playbook

An Important Aside – Database Migration Like the application tier, here are considerations for your app database management system (DBMS):

Pros Leave OnPremise Lift-and-Shift DBMS Server to Cloud-Hosted VM Migrate to CloudManaged DBMS

Cons

• Simple – no migration plan needed • No change in cost

• Requires secure, fast pipeline from cloud to internal network and maintenance of DBMS and server (application and OS patches)

• Simple move to the cloud • Eliminates need for pipeline into internal network

• Requires maintenance of DBMS and server (application and OS patches) • An Azure-hosted VM of similar size to an on-premise VM will generally cost more • Requires buy-in from security personnel

• • • •

Fastest app-to-database connectivity • Resource utilization needs to be optimized to control No DBMS and server maintenance concerns costs Built-in redundancy and disaster recovery • Requires buy-in from security personnel Elastic scaling to maximize resources-per-dollar (more • With different management and monitoring interfaces, resources for peak hours, less for off hours) requires training of existing personnel

App Mod Playbook

How To Avoid Busting Your Budget

You’ve picked a cloud provider and dev approach. The next priority is staying on budget while executing your app mod plan.

• Monitor cloud resources closely. In one study, organizations reported cloud costs that were 62% higher, on average, than anticipated. Avoid this by monitoring and eliminating unused/underused cloud resources. • Use agile delivery practices. Start quickly, deliver often, and communicate continuously. Focus on the most valuable components and be radically transparent about challenges. • Have the right staff. Make sure staff have access to knowledge on how to architect and design for your app mod selection. Support them by bringing in experts to kickstart projects and instill new skills. And don’t forget support staff (QA, BA, UX, and DevOps). • Practice efficient software development. Eliminate code duplication by having toolkits for common tasks/scenarios, prioritize automated tests and create them alongside application code, and ensure developer/tester environments can be spooled up on demand. Source: IDG Research © Polaris LLC. All rights reserved. Disclosure is subject to the restriction on the title page of this document.

At Polaris, we believe in meeting our partners where they are and helping them find the right solutions for long-term success. Need help picking a cloud provider, staying on budget, or with any of the five steps covered here? Reach out for a free Modernization Discovery session.

Thank You!

www.polaris.llc

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