Migrating Applications to Mitigate Business Risks and Operate More Effectively

By Ghulam Nabi Shah | Published on April 13th, 2021 | Last updated on April 20th, 2021 |

Why Companies are Moving Out of Legacy Applications.

Technological advancements happen exponentially, and new products are released frequently making the global technology market highly competitive. Businesses who rely on their software constantly risk becoming outdated or falling behind their competition. To stay current, they need to be willing to migrate their applications to new platforms and databases, use new programming languages and operating systems. There are risks to this as well, however, users and customers in today’s world have high expectations from the services and products they use and may require you to modernize your applications.

Driving factors to assess when deciding whether to migrate include:

•  Maintenance issues
• Compatibility issues
• Scalability issues
• Performance issues
• Security issues
• Reliability issues
• Lack of skilled resources to maintain, operate and to repair
• Increased operating cost

If your business is facing issues from the above list, modernizing your applications by migrating to a better platform may help drive down costs, improve performance, and increase ease of use, while providing innovative opportunities to develop your business in the long term.

Migrating applications to a newer platform is easier said than done and it requires skilled resources to engage in the lengthy process. Although automated tools are sometimes available to assist in a migration project, they typically have limited capabilities and the expertise of experienced migration teams is still required. Almost every migration combines automated and manual processes to migrate properly. Functionality and the technical aspects must be mapped first for the existing application. Some of the application functionalities may require re-coding to work correctly on the latest platform. Strong technical skills together with an in-depth understanding of the application’s functionality are necessary to do this properly. Even though the solution is migrating to a newer platform, the business functionalities take the center stage. Companies providing migration services should maintain a dedicated pool of resources skilled in legacy technologies as well as the latest ones. .NET, Azure, and Cloud are some examples of the viable platforms currently available for application migration. Since the application is on a newer and better platform, new features can be added, a business can expand reach to a greater pool of users as the application is web-native as well.

The right way to approach a large-scale migration project is to have a strategy. Below are a few points to be aware of before starting a migration project:

• Adequate Planning – Planning is the most important aspect of commencing a conversion operation.  Plan for resources, budget, schedule, defining requirements, testing, and implementation.
• Analyze the risk – Calculating the risks associated is very important while doing a conversion. Data is the core of your organization so it should be properly backed up, and the migration process must be accomplished without losing any data and preserves its integrity.  Information security should be maintained during all phases of the migration process as cybersecurity issues such as information leakage, data breaches, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), SQL Injection, Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF), and session management vulnerabilities, are becoming common these days.
• Documentation – Often overlooked, the existing applications should be documented properly as should any planned changes or additional features. Ensure your documentation includes all requirements, your approach, software, and hardware to be used, as well as how you plan to test the migrated application.
• Multi-Phase Deployment – Application migration is best-accomplished batch by batch. Divide an application into logical segments and concentrate on individual items and then move further in a sequential process. This will allow your team to have a better focus on each segment.

Following are the benefits of migrating the business applications into the latest technologies:

• Increased robustness with support for web, mobile and client-server environments.
• Better performance with native optimization and caching services.
• Increased Security- The latest platforms will successfully obstruct or nullify the chances of a possible malware attack. Migration to the .NET platform has an added advantage of the Windows Authentication feature which helps to easily maintain the security of applications. Moreover, with migration, security glitches in the existing application can be addressed when re-engineering the application.
• Simplified execution of tasks such as Form Submission, and Client Authentication.
• Lower maintenance costs- as the resources are readily available when compared to an outdated platform, so maintenance costs will be obviously lower.
• Increased Productivity – Latest platforms will be much streamlined and easy to handle, hence increases productivity.
• Straightforward deployment of the application as most of the latest technologies come with built-in configuration information.

Migration of your applications to a more up-to-date platform will allow you to not only maintain but add functionality to your applications faster, thereby increasing the value of your application to your business. Increased usability and accessibility should certainly not be overlooked. Additionally, protecting your data and applications should be high on your list of priorities as outdated platforms can be vulnerable to security breaches.  Migration to a stable platform provides better performance which in turn helps to earn customer satisfaction to boost your business.

To understand more about how an application migration can help your business operate more effectively, contact Macrosoft at [email protected].

Ghulam Nabi Shah

Chief Executive Officer at Macrosoft Inc

Shah is a forward thinking, institutional leader with eighteen years of experience. During his tenure as CEO, Shah has delivered top notch customer solutions in large scale and enterprise environments. His proven abilities as a technology visionary and driver of strategic business systems development allow Macrosoft to deliver best in class software solutions. Shah is the catalyst that brings IT to organizations, enables innovation, and expands the delivery of global capabilities. He also fuels business growth, and optimizes delivery while managing risks and costs. Shah currently holds a compiler patent with the US Patent Office.

Shah holds an MBA (Computer Science), in addition to 20+ professional and technical certifications. While he is proficient in a variety of development languages, his preferred language is Python. His areas of expertise include enterprise-wide architecture, application migration, IT transformation, mobile, and offshore development management. Shah’s ultimate goal, at Macrosoft, is to create a larger offering of product-based services while adopting new technologies.

In that rare instance when he has time for leisure, Shah is an avid cricket and football fan and a weekly racquetball player.