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6 Questions to Ask Yourself When Moving your Legacy App to the Cloud

By Rob Waggoner

Moving your legacy application to the cloud can be a time-consuming and costly process if you have to rewrite it as a web app. This means moving a legacy app isn’t realistic for everyone. But, if you still want to move your legacy application, there are other options that don’t require you to re-write code. Ready to learn more? Start by asking yourself these 6 questions.

Infrastructure

  1. What kind of infrastructure does your application have now?

This is a great question to ask yourself to make sure you understand what your infrastructure looks like now and what you want it to look like moving forward. Software Developers and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) everywhere are looking for ways to transform their business in the cloud. Some have opted to re-write their application as a web app, while others can’t afford the time or cost. Sound familiar?

Some ISVs have found an easy way to saasify their application leveraging Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (RDS), more specifically RemoteApp, to deliver their app anywhere and on any device. The technology allows you to host your application in the public cloud and be able to start meeting demand now.

Pros and Cons of Re-Writing vs Migrating. Click here to read more.

  1. What do you want to manage? What do you want to control? What are the cost implications?

This question can lead you to an interesting discovery. Do you want to fully manage everything? That includes managing hardware and everything else. This overhead can make it challenging to grow your business. Migrating to the cloud would allow you to manage your infrastructure and control cost and performance, without having to deal with all the hardware that comes with it. And since you would no longer be in charge of the hardware, you no longer have to worry about the hardware cost.

Curious about the cost savings? Click here to read more.

Scalability

  1. How does your app scale now?

Just as with highway systems in major cities, they are built for rush hour, not 3am. In a city like Dallas, you’ll see major road systems with 4 lanes on each side. During rush hour, going downtown can be a challenge, but you're stuck with those 4 dedicated lanes. What if you could move even just one lane going the opposite direction over? That would help alleviate some of the slow down.

While this might not be realistic, it is how the cloud works. In the cloud, if your users only need your application for 5 hours a day, then you can have it on for only 5 hours and off for 19 hours. Right now, if you add more users, you need to add more hardware and just like the roads, you always have to keep max demand in mind. With the cloud, you’re paying only for what you use, when you use it.

Ready to scale on-demand? Click here to read more.

 

  1. How do you increase profitability?

Think about your business model right now, how do you earn revenue? Have you been able to increase profitability easily or do costs always make it a challenge? One of the scarier parts of moving to the cloud is changing your business model. Moving to a Monthly Recurring Revenue model can be a big change, but it can a positive change. The cloud gives you the chance to have a more stable month to month revenue projection and understand how your business is doing. The other benefit of moving to the cloud is lifting the geographic restrictions. Now that you are not restricted, you can look at other tactics for increasing profitability.

Don't let misconceptions fool you. Click here to read more.

Management

  1. How often do you have to upgrade your on-prem infrastructure?

Whether you have an on-prem infrastructure or pay a hosting-service provider (HSP), you have to pay to manage the infrastructure. That said, if you do manage your hardware on-prem, you most likely upgrade your on-prem infrastructure every 3-5 years, which means you probably only bring major innovation during those upgrades. As quickly as technology advances, this can be costly and frustrating if timed wrong.

The public cloud brings constant new infrastructure updates every 3-6 months and you benefit from those updates with minimal effort on your end. For example, Microsoft Azure continually updates their infrastructure to allow customers to utilize things like multi-factor authentication, VPN connectivity, global resiliency, and other new features as they come to market.

Do you want to leverage the newest hardware and solutions quickly and not want to wait? Click here to read more.

  1. What maintenance are you responsible for? How do you manage your maintenance?

You are most likely responsible for hardware maintenance, infrastructure maintenance, application maintenance, and storage maintenance to name a few. Managing the maintenance can be time consuming. Consider how much more time you could invest in tasks to help grow your business. The cloud not only reduces what you have to maintain, but it gives you the time back, so you can focus on driving end user value instead of mundane tasks.

Since re-writing your application isn’t required, now the question becomes how do you want to migrate your application? Click here to read more.

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Tags: Independent Software Vendor, Move to the Cloud

azure cost optimization

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