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Application Portfolio Analysis

Jumpstarting Migration with Portfolio Analysis

Cloud migration planning includes a series of structured activities to discover, profile, and categorize applications. The analysis effort also maps and incorporates practices around application rationalization and categorization based on Gartner’s TIME (Tolerate, Invest, Modernize or Eliminate) methodology. stackArmor’s Cloud team works with the agency stakeholders and program owners to collect information and assist with the segmentation of applications based on cost, time, and value to come up with recommendations for optimal migration paths.

Figure: Cloud Migration Pathways for selecting the optimal migration approach for specific applications based on the TIME analysis done as part of the Cloud Modernization Framework

The optimal cloud migration pathway is selected based on the cost, schedule, and strategic value of the application or investment. Each of the cloud migration paths is explained in detail below:

Re-host – This is a “lift-and-shift” approach to rapidly migrating an application to a cloud service while minimizing changes required to execute such a migration. Optimizing the hosting environment to take advantage of commonly available constructs including but not limited to auto-scaling; deployment and operations automation; using PaaS or Cloud-native Managed Services are expected to accompany this migration pathway.

Re-platform – This migration approach is ideal for an application that has a specific cloud “incompatibility” that must be removed to perform a successful cloud migration. No functional changes are performed given that the objective is to execute and accomplish the fastest path to cloud migration by remediating the factor or factors that lead to incompatibility. The ability to take advantage of cloud services such as automation; elasticity and reduced need for management are expected to be used in this migration pathway.

Re-architect – This approach requires transforming the underlying application, data, and systems components to use more efficient cloud-native services. The goal of this migration pathway is to deliver an advanced and modern architecture that takes advantage of the current state of the art patterns including microservices, serverless computing, AI, and automation to deliver high performance, secure and cost-efficient solutions that meets customer performance requirements.

stackArmor has successfully analyzed and helped large organizations identify cloud migration targets using our proven application portfolio analysis. As part of our GSA Cloud Adoption Center of Excellence (CoE) engagement we analyzed over 1,200 applications in less than 6 months and provided an actionable migration roadmap including a test migration of a USDA Forest Service application to AWS. Click here to learn more about our Cloud Advisory Solutions.