The Need For Speed: Using the Power of Cloud for App Innovation
Adam Szabo, Modern App Practice Lead at New
Signature says “There are many reasons why a
business should consider moving its apps into
the cloud. Firstly, legacy apps usually have
high maintenance cost. Secondly, when apps
were designed 5 or even 10 years ago they were
typically created with a specific purpose and
requirement in mind, but huge changes can
happen over that time.
“As additional functions are added on top,
complexity and maintenance cost increases.
Ultimately the business reaches a point where
it needs more flexibility to meet current and
future business requirements. That’s often the
point where app modernisation comes onto the
agenda.”
individual components one at a time with a
modernised version but leaving the rest of the
app intact. This works well for businesses who
don’t want to rewrite the whole app but want
some improvements and a path for continuous
improvement.
Cloud rearchitecture, however, looks to eventually
decommission legacy applications by creating
entirely new versions in the cloud. In some
instances, a complete app rearchitecture in the
cloud presents the best ROI in the long-term by
helping to optimise cost and performance, as well
as providing a future-proofed app that can keep
adapting to meet business requirements in the
future.
Making the move to cloud
There are three broad development options for
business looking to modernise and refresh their
application estate – on-going app modernisation,
cloud re-architecture or refining and enhancing
the app on-premise.
To refine and enhance the app on-premise is more
suitable for simple back-fixes and where small
additional features need to be introduced. These
can be achieved without moving the app from
your on-premise infrastructure, however, that
doesn’t take away the maintenance requirement
and cost, simply providing some short-term gain.
With app modernisation, businesses consolidate,
refresh or restructure the legacy application in
order to align it with current business needs,
often moving components of the app into the
cloud where greater efficiency can be achieved.
Ongoing modernisation allows you to replace
New Signature caters for all three options, helping
to assist businesses in converting legacy apps,
building entirely new cloud-native applications
to sit with-in Azure or providing simple fixes and
adding new features, depending on what the
short and long term goals are.
“For many businesses, the decision to
modernise apps is increasingly becoming a
matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’. We support
businesses to find the right route for them,
balancing the initial upfront investment
required with the long-term end-goal and
savings,” comments Adam Szabo from New
Signature.
“A successful app modernisation project
requires involvement and ownership from
different stakeholders within the business.
We encourage each of them to consider what
they want to achieve in terms of performance
gains, cost outlay verses savings, and their
future business roadmap. It’s vital that they
envision where the business needs to be versus
where they are right now, and we help them to
bridge this gap, so they can transform their use
of applications to drive closer to that desired
end-state.”
Modernising apps causes less disruption to the
business and existing systems than if brand
new applications were developed. As well as
less risk, the investment required to modernise
existing apps eliminates the ROI worries of
those fearing the move to cloud.
New Signature’s cloud-based solutions hosted
in Azure allow businesses to take advantage of
capabilities like elastic scaling, which enable
applications to easily handle spikes in usage
without complex infrastructure changes,
reducing costs significantly. In addition,
disaster recovery is made simpler through
the cloud, as well as the ability to increase
collaboration since cloud-based apps are
available from any location and device. Data
security is also ensured in the cloud, with
businesses able to control access to their data.
Future-Proofing the Digital Business
App Modernisation also enables the business
to future-proof their operations, tapping into
the resources and technological prowess of the
Microsoft platform and being able to leverage
the latest technologies.
One business to realise the benefits of app
modernisation was Indignia, a software
technology company providing SupplyStream,
a business critical SaaS application. Before
working with New Signature, the application
was running on hardware on-premises,
requiring management of both the server
hardware and its software and putting
constraints on both the scalability and
availability of the application. Indigina slashed
maintenance costs by migrating their onpremises application to the fully managed
Microsoft Azure platform. New Signature
conducted the necessary upgrades and
transformations to make the application
cloud-ready, then moved it to Azure’s
managed platform.
“New Signature migrated SupplyStream,
Indigina’s on-premises business critical SaaS
application, to Microsoft Azure. They enabled
us to fully utilise the benefits of the scalability
and availability of the cloud platform. Not
only has the move cut maintenance efforts,
but it has given us reassurances that in the
event of a disaster we can maintain business as
usual,” said Alon Kovner, Technical Director at
Indigina.
DevOps in the Modern App Roadmap
DevOps has been one of the biggest trends
to hit IT in recent times, with the concept
advocating the unification of software
development and operations in order to
deliver applications at high velocity. The
popular portmanteau was born with a clear
rationale behind it – markets are fast moving,
so software development needs to be as quick
for business to stay profitable and competitive.
But where does DevOps come into the Modern
App equation?
DevOps is vital when a business brings out new
applications – be it modern iterations of legacy
applications or new build, cloud-native apps.
In modern app development, DevOps when
applied properly can streamline processes
and allow for a cohesive workflow. Ultimately,
DevOps looks to aid a more lean and agile
operation, and could help you deliver shorter
development cycles, increased deployment
frequency and more dependable releases – all
while aligned with business objectives.
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