Legacy Architecture: How to Avoid Getting Stuck in the Modernization Process
Organisations are now operating entire businesses in the cloud and benefiting from faster, more efficient, reliable, secure and scalable computing, but many with legacy architecture and code are finding themselves competing with businesses that have been ‘born in the cloud’ and lacking the agility of their competitors.
Unless an organization is ‘born in the cloud’ – with all its assets and infrastructure designed for the cloud – many may be left with applications that cannot be easily shifted. Andy Dunn, chief revenue officer, CSI, discusses pitfalls to avoid in the process of modernization and cites examples to explain how companies can be smarter in their transformation.
Advances in platform options and SaaS are driving more organizations to the cloud than ever before. The Flexera 2022 State of the Cloud report found that public cloud spend is a significant line item in IT budgets. In 2022, 53% of businesses will spend more than $1.2 million on public cloud — up from 38% last year. Organizations are now operating entire businesses in the cloud and benefiting from faster, more efficient, reliable, secure and scalable computing.
But many organizations with legacy architecture and code are finding themselves competing with businesses that have been ‘born in the cloud’ and lacking the agility of their competitors. It’s likely their legacy architecture may be hampering digital modernization due to applications that cannot be easily shifted to SaaS or consumption-based models offered by the public cloud. Thanks to the rate of digital transformation, legacy applications and the platforms that run them can soon become a millstone around a company’s neck. No organization wants to be left stuck halfway through its digital transformation.
See More: How Modernizing Legacy Apps Reduces Technical Debt: vFunction CEO Explains
Stuck with Mounting Costs to Pay
Another reason to shift workloads to the cloud is cost. Companies can be put in a tricky position if they are stuck in a mix of legacy and cloud-native workloads without being able to reduce costs.
If a business runs legacy applications on-premises utilizing physical servers, those boxes must stay in place until the last workload moves off the hardware. The capex investment remains the same in terms of power, cooling and maintenance costs regardless of the capacity the legacy workloads are consuming.
As the workloads are moved into the public cloud in phases, cloud spend increases, but the baseline costs are the same whether you have one or 200 workloads running on the on-premises infrastructure.
What Can be Done about Legacy Workloads?
It’s possible for organizations to incrementally modernize their application architecture to containerized microservices that can take advantage of hyperscale public clouds. For many businesses, both large and small, the default solution is x86, but there is another solution to use a provider who can offer compatible IBM Power Servers in a cloud model. It’s then possible to ‘lift and shift’ that legacy workload into a cloud consumption model and immediately remove the capex cost of the underlying, aging hardware.
This model leverages economies of scale as one platform can service multiple customers. It helps create a best-of-both-worlds cloud strategy with adjacent x86 systems in Azure, while IBM Power stays on-premises or moves to the MSP’s cloud environment. Not only does it allow existing core applications to continue running in an optimized IBM architecture, but it also creates a foundation for companies to start building cloud-native services that integrate with the legacy applications, extending functionality and improving customer experience. Managed security, data protection and disaster recovery can also be introduced as wrap-around services to ensure availability, resilience and performance.
Keeping Core Systems Going with the Reassurance of DRaaS
One supply chain logistics partner ran many mission-critical applications on legacy systems in disparate places. Their core business applications were running on a mix of AIX and IBM i on IBM Power Systems located in different data centers for production and DR, with escalating costs and multiple issues with legacy applications. Protecting these systems was a high priority.
The business wanted to move to a hosted model to reduce its data center costs and secure its legacy apps for the future. One possibility was simply relocating its existing systems to data centers operated by a third-party hosting provider. While this approach would address the data center footprint, the legacy issues would need to be resolved through costly upgrades.
The company was already adopting cloud services for x86 systems and wanted to take advantage of cloud-based Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and DR as a Service (DRaaS) for its core systems as an alternative to re-hosting the existing systems. By switching to the right cloud tool, performance and availability would improve, and costs would be reduced by 40% over two years with IaaS capacity for six IBM i LPARs and two AIX LPARs together with 22TB of storage. High availability and DRaaS are provided by real-time replication between two separate sites, and the company benefits from 24×7 support, which means its core applications are consistently monitored and managed.
Business Growth Without Additional Infrastructure Outlay
FNZ is a leading independent software vendor (ISV) providing innovative wealth management solutions. It offers clients a fully integrated front-to-back-office solution with a web interface for client and agent access. In a traditional Fintech ISV model, the client would be responsible for the underlying IT environment, but FNZ wanted to increase its client base by removing the need to purchase additional infrastructure and conduct regular upgrades to run its applications.
It adopted a model based on a managed hybrid cloud environment that’s resilient, accessible, and highly secure. The business could then offer clients an Infrastructure as a Service model that can adapt as clients’ business grows.
Figaro, one of FNZ’s core financial applications, runs on IBM i on IBM Power Servers. The company went ahead with a tool based on the latest IBM Power Servers as well as Windows and Linux-based virtual machines, together with tiered storage and data protection services.
The second challenge was finding a cost-effective software testing solution to improve the speed with which FNZ’s developers could roll out new releases. With test-as-a-service, an offering based on IBM Power Systems Virtual Server in the IBM Cloud, FNZ could take better-informed decisions.FNZ now has a test-ready environment with as much compute power as it needs. It can spin up new virtual servers in approximately 10 minutes. Its developers can also complete tests up to 15 times faster by using the virtual servers for as long as they need and deleting them after use.
See More: How to Actualize a Prescriptive Well-Architected Framework
The Real Benefits of the Cloud for Everyone
There are many ways of using a service provider’s PowerCloud to transition or modernize much more smoothly. This allows organizations to cut ties with costly in-house legacy infrastructure while providing access to the right skill sets and the latest and greatest version of the technology on a consumption basis. This means that the real benefits of the cloud can be obtained for everyone.
How are you managing the constraints of your legacy architecture in your cloud evolution? Tell us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We’d love to know!
MORE ON LEGACY ARCHITECTURE
