Article Is There a Magic Bullet for ISVs to Modernise Legacy Apps?
By Insight UK / 25 Nov 2022 / Topics: Cybersecurity
By Insight UK / 25 Nov 2022 / Topics: Cybersecurity
Modernising legacy applications is quite a challenge for software companies and ISVs. Legacy apps are often large, custom applications for business-critical processes that are at the heart of your customers' organisations. But legacy applications are quickly becoming obsolete and the cloud with all its advantages is luring. It is high time to modernise your legacy applications for the cloud, but how?
Legacy apps date from way before the cloud. They are built with older technology and architectures and, over the years, have grown into bulky applications, woven across the entire organisation. The older the applications, the less agile and adaptable they are to the digital requirements of today in terms of software functionality, security or compliance. They get slower and are more prone to failure and downtime, incurring unnecessary extra time and costs. How do you think this influences the user experience of your customers, especially when they compare your application to cloud-native apps from competitors?
How (and even if) you migrate an application to the cloud depends on its business value and technical feasibility. There are several scenarios. The fastest and easiest approach is a lift-and-shift migration: you move your app to the cloud as it is, without changes, but also without cloud modernisation. Other approaches range from retiring or retaining the app to repurchasing it as SaaS or – the most expensive and time-consuming – rebuilding it from scratch in the cloud. You decide what best fits your business strategy as an ISV. There is no magic bullet here... or perhaps there is? What if you decide to go for containerisation?
ISVs and developers are increasingly adopting cloud-native, technologies such as containers and serverless Kubernetes environments to accelerate their migration to the cloud. Apps are no longer built as monolithic code, but are broken down into microservices that make up the application. Those microservices do not run on VMs but in containers with only their own dependencies and resource usage when needed.
Container technology means a huge step forward for ISVs and their DevOps teams, not only in new cloud-native development, but also for app modernisation. It makes a rebuild manageable, while providing immediate cloud benefits such as speed, agility, flexibility and high-level automation to continuously monitor and optimise your container workloads in any cloud. All at a lower cost.
Kubernetes has become the standard for containerisation. VMware was a forerunner in this and, with VMware Tanzu, created a management platform that lets you easily build and manage modern apps in modular Kubernetes clusters on any private, public or multi-cloud environment. And that is super interesting for ISVs. The expertise and advanced tooling in VMware Tanzu helps you modernise existing legacy applications or build new cloud-native apps in weeks instead of months. Think of how that speeds up your time-to-market. And how it mitigates security and operational risks through built-in end-to-end security with automation and pro-active monitoring.
For developers, VMware Tanzu is heaven. They no longer have to deal with infrastructure, packaging and other operational tasks, but can do what they love most: develop great code. It allows them to build the application once and have the freedom to run it in every cloud. Automated continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) speeds up time to develop, test and release new code for production. At the same time, when in production, management is a piece of cake. That gives you plenty of advantages as an ISV in both development and management.
Furthermore, there are also gains at business level. Companies want technologies that are sufficiently flexible and scalable so that they can quickly adapt to changing needs at reasonable costs. This agility is no longer found in legacy applications, but in the cloud, with VMware Tanzu. This gives you another, very strong reason why modernising existing applications and switching to modern development methods is a must. Not only for your own business, but certainly also to continue to meet your customers’ needs.
Legacy apps seem to be the nail in the coffin for ISVs and their customers, but there is no need for that. We at Insight are ready to help you innovate your legacy applications for the cloud. Contact one of our cloud specialists for a talk. As a VMware Aggregator Partner, Insight is able to offer guidance on VMware’s portfolio within the VMware Cloud Provider and Managed Service Provider Programs.
We have been working with partners like you across Europe for many years. We help them to find ways to optimise efficiency, reduce costs, mitigate risks and maximise revenue by providing valuable time, knowledge and support in many (hybrid) cloud scenarios. Contact us to find out how we can support you in securing your cloud ambitions in line with your business goals, whether you are designing your first workloads in the cloud or work entirely cloud-based.
Follow our blogs on cloud adoption or read our client stories to find out what others say.
