App modernization can be a rewarding process. However, if not done right, it can become a nightmare. 74% of organizations fail to complete app modernization projects states a report from Businesswire. To ensure your company doesn’t become one of these organizations and your app modernization process is a success, you need to keep in mind certain pitfalls you might encounter while modernizing your application.
In this blog, we’ll talk about six such application modernization pitfalls you should avoid for establishing a clear, unified direction. Let’s discuss these app modernization pitfalls in detail:
Pitfall 1: Having an incomplete or outdated view of the infrastructure
Migrating the on-premises applications to the cloud is complex. Most modern apps consist of multiple tiers, hundreds of microservices, and components from third parties.
Opting for app modernization without completely understanding the critical, hidden dependencies will only result in performance issues and increased costs. Many organizations are facing app modernization issues because of the same reason.
How to Avoid this Pitfall?
- Take a methodical and streamlined approach to technology selection and process implementation.
- Apply your data center consolidation practices to your app migration project.
- Use flow monitoring tools to streamline the planning phase, get an accurate view of your application landscape, and validate how app components are communicating.
Pitfall 2: Unclear Organization Direction
Modernizing your app without clear organization direction is like traveling in an unknown city without a map. It will only lead to unnecessary confusion, reckless business decisions, increased costs, and efforts going wasted.
If your team is not on the same page, no member will understand what you’re trying to achieve, and everyone will keep doing things on their own. In the end, you would realize there is no progress or there is no progress even after months.
How to Avoid This Pitfall?
Set clear objectives in the beginning of your app modernization journey. Doing so will keep everyone on the same phase, track each member’s progress, and successfully modernize your apps.
Pitfall 3: Not Understanding the Network Bandwidth and Latency Constraints
Two things happen when you migrate an application to the cloud:
- The bandwidth utilization increases
- The network links become oversaturated
These two factors often lead to the degradation of the user experience.
Apart from this, the response time is longer in cloud-based applications as the traffic must be routed through multiple servers. This increases the time taken to complete a transaction, thus also increasing the latency.
Trying to migrate your apps without completely understanding the impact on these two constraints can lead to disastrous results and lack of user satisfaction.
How to avoid this pitfall?
- Conduct a cloud migration assessment to test the critical application transactions and visualize these end-to-end constraints. Doing so will help you see where the excessive time and bandwidth are being consumed so that you can identify the areas for improvement.
- Buy more bandwidth. Doing so will reduce network utilization, accelerate your application, and increase the transaction throughput.
- Keep looking for opportunities to divert some cloud traffic directly to the internet. This will remove additional hops between the user and the cloud.
Pitfall 4: Application, Network, Security Teams Operating in Silos
Generally separate IT teams focus on separate domains. While this may work in the traditional approach, responsibilities are more of a blended sort when it comes to migrating apps to the cloud. Amidst this, your application, network, and security teams working in silos will do more harm than good.
How to Avoid this Pitfall?
- Establish a cross-functional team and apply the principles of DevOps to ensure collaboration, agility, and efficiency during the app migration.
- Create a centralized view of the application performance so that everyone has a single source of information. Doing so will also accelerate troubleshooting and provide meaningful data to stakeholders.
Pitfall 5: Falling for shortcuts
Since the pressure of modernizing apps is tremendous, we opt for modernization shortcuts. However, the problem with app modernization is that not all the modernization efforts are equal. Lift and shift, containerization, and application refactoring all are called modernization. However, only refactoring offers true benefits of the cloud like reduced costs, elasticity, and regained engineering velocity.
Now, if you fall for quick app modernization shortcuts, you will keep paying more and trading one set of monolithic problems for others.
How to overcome this pitfall?
Never trade a well-defined approach for quick and easy processes. It can lead to increased chances of things going wrong.
6. Not Keeping Everyone on the Same Phase
Application modernization is not about technology alone. Processes, structures, and skills of your team play an equally important part. You must adopt DevOps and cloud-native practices to ensure you can take complete advantage of the benefit app modernization has to offer.
That is why it’s important to ensure you are keeping everyone on the same phase. Otherwise, app modernization will do more harm than good.
How to overcome this pitfall?
- Ensure all the members of your team are on board (including UI teams, DevOps, and Quality engineering teams).
- Adequately train each member to adapt to the challenges and responsibilities app modernization brings along.
Takeaway
App modernization is a double-edged sword. While it offers compelling benefits, there are challenges you need to overcome and pitfalls you need to be aware of. Otherwise, all your efforts will go wasted. Hopefully, the blog gave you an idea of how you can avoid these app modernization pitfalls so that app modernization is a smooth process for you.
Still, if you need more guidance, we can help. Having enough knowledge and expertise with app modernization can help you identify the risks involved and plan out a smooth app modernization journey. Talk to our experts to get started.
