Delivering Next-gen IT Solutions through Cloud Migration and Modernization

The pandemic has urged business and operational leaders to look for options that can help to manage their business smoothly without any showstoppers. When it pertains to IT operations/services, it made the
decision-makers and influencers to start thinking about efficient ways to run their IT business applications in a sustained manner at lower operational cost without any impact on business-as-usual.

This, in turn, made the leaders think seriously about cloud modernization of legacy applications as a way to realize the benefits of scalability, elasticity, reduction in licensing costs, pay-per-use, etc. and deliver a
next-generation digital experience to the end users. This blog uncovers a class-leading cloud transformation approach for legacy application modernization backed by a best-fit cloud modernization strategy and highlights the role of amaze^®, Hexaware’s proprietary cloud modernization product suite, in making the cloud journey smoother, faster, and secure.

Get Future-ready with Next-gen Cloud Replatforming

Replatforming an application involves migrating an existing on-premises application to any private/public cloud while adopting a cloud native application architecture (macro service) to make the application work efficiently by taking advantage of the scalability and elastic features of containerization in the cloud. In this journey, the following are the six major activities that are generally performed (although they may vary from application to application):

• Modify the existing application to work effectively on the target cloud platform (private/public)
• All the blockers related to source code and on-premises design patterns to be identified and resolved
• All the underlying libraries to be upgraded to make the application compatible with a container or an equivalent PaaS
• Monolith application to be de-coupled into smaller macro services for efficiency and velocity, the number of macro services to be finalized during the design phase
• Replatform the legacy database to cloud-friendly options like PostgreSQL as applicable
• Replatform the application server to cloud-friendly and open source solutions like Apache Tomcat as applicable

To perform the above cloud modernization activities in an accelerated manner, Hexaware has developed amaze^® product suite. Amaze^® provides an automated solution to containerize a legacy application into macro services and ensures that there is no change to the application’s existing functionality. Amaze^® is uniquely positioned to accomplish application and database cloud replatforming.

Our Approach

We help you to achieve this technology modernization by following a phased approach as below:

1. Preparation

• Access to application code, DB schema, and development environment setup

2. Intake

• A detailed analysis of the application source code
• Finalize service decomposition from monolith
• Communicate upstream and downstream impact to stakeholders
• Finalize the application architecture
• Identify the existing critical test cases
• Finalize the application and data migration strategy
• Baseline performance of the current application

3. Development

• Transformation and application replatforming
• Configuration and integration with CI/CD pipeline
• Application unit testing and comparison testing

4. Testing Support

• Provide the required development support to fix the bugs identified during testing
• Knowledge transfer and closeout documentation

Methodology and Delivery Plan

As a part of the above listed approach, following are the deliverables we ensure at each phase:

1. Intake Phase

• Cloud migration and modernization strategy document covering1. Target architecture
  2. Target deployment model
  3. Application inventory
  4. DB replatform strategy
• Migration acceptance criteria covering1. Functional validation checkpoints (test cases)
  2. Non-functional requirements

2. Development Phase

• Migrated source code checked into version control
• API unit test cases
• Successful test results against the agreed acceptance criteria

3. Testing Support Phase (System, User Acceptance, and Performance Tests)

• Fixing defects that arise due to application replatforming
• Build, deployment, and environment support

In this end-to-end cloud modernization path, you get to view the entire amaze^®-led cloud replatforming process and the agility demonstrated in the cloud transformation with the required customizations throughout the project. Following are the major benefits we deliver to our customers in this cloud transformation journey:

• Over 50% reduction in TCO
• Over 50% savings in implementation cost
• Rapid cloud migration in 6-9 weeks
• Increased development productivity

Take the first step by leveraging amaze^® product suite to analyze your legacy applications, database cloud readiness, and the optimization required. Reach us at amaze@hexaware.com to benefit from our cloud modernization services.