Skip to main content

Application Modernization: A GigaOm Field Test

So-called legacy software gets that name for a reason—it’s done enough for the organization over the years to earn a legacy enabling the business. But as GigaOm Analyst Ned Bellavance notes in a recently published GigaOm benchmark report (“Costs and Benefits of .NET Application Migration to the Cloud”), aging on-premises applications and infrastructure can work against businesses as they seek to scale, innovate, and grow.

A cloud modernization effort can change that. By migrating application logic and functionality to the cloud, enterprises avail themselves of the matchless scalability and managed services offered by major cloud providers. In the report, Bellevance lays out four options for organizations looking to cloudify their application portfolios.

Figure 1: Cloud Application Modernization Spectrum

  • Rehost: “Lift-and-shift” virtual machines running on on-premises servers to cloud-based servers. Simple and quick.
  • Replatform: Migrate application logic (say, ASP.NET apps) to a cloud-based Platform as a Service (PaaS) from an on-premises platform. Still simple and adds managed infrastructure, but requires minor code changes.
  • Refactor: Review and restructure existing code to leverage cloud-based models and services. True cloud focus and deep PaaS integration comes at the cost of major code changes and re-architecting.
  • Rewrite: Replace existing on-premises applications with cloud-native versions offering similar, if not enhanced functionality. Complex and time consuming, but the resulting cloud-native applications are loosely coupled and independently scalable.

Of these, replatforming offers considerable value and opportunity. Organizations avoid the cost and risk of new application development, while gaining access to powerful managed services and the raw scalability of the cloud.

In the report, Bellavance designed a series of benchmark tests designed to prove out real-world application performance across three, largely equivalent on-premises and cloud-based PaaS infrastructures:

  • Windows VMs running on VMware
  • Microsoft Azure using Azure App Service and Azure SQL Database
  • AWS using Elastic Beanstalk, EC2, and Amazon RDS

His findings? Performance among the three options was roughly on par—unsurprising given that the test environment was designed for equivalency—but the costs varied markedly. The estimated cost of the tested on-premises infrastructure was $69,300, while the equivalent cost for AWS was $43,060. By contrast, for .NET shops moving to Azure, the cost was even lower—just $31,824.

The steep advantage versus AWS comes in large part from Azure Hybrid Benefit licensing, which enables Microsoft customers to apply their existing Windows Server and SQL Server licenses to Azure virtual machines and Azure SQL Database instances. And that can yield more than $10,000 in savings for an Azure migration compared to AWS.

Read the full GigaOm Report, “Costs and Benefits of .NET Application Migration to the Cloud.”



from Gigaom https://gigaom.com/2020/10/20/application-modernization-a-gigaom-field-test/
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who is NetApp?

At Cloud Field Day 9 Netapp presented some of its cloud solutions. This comes on the heels of NetApp Insight , the annual corporate event that should give its user base not just new products but also a general overview of the company strategy for the future. NetApp presented a lot of interesting news and projects around multi-cloud data and system management. The Transition to Data Fabric This is not the first time that NetApp radically changed its strategy. Do you remember when NetApp was the boring ONTAP-only company? Not that there is anything wrong with ONTAP of course (the storage OS originally designed by NetApp is still at the core of many of its storage appliances). It just can’t be the solution for everything, even if it does work pretty well. When ONTAP was the only answer to every question (even with StorageGrid and EF systems already part of the portfolio), the company started to look boring and, honestly, not very credible. The day the Data Fabric vision was announced
Post a Comment
Read more

Inside Research: People Analytics

In a recent report, “ Key Criteria for Evaluating People Analytics ,” distinguished analyst Stowe Boyd looks at the emerging field of people analytics, and examines the platforms that focus on human resources and the criteria with which to best judge their capabilities. Stowe in the report outlines the table stakes criteria of People Analytics—the essential features and capabilities without which a platform can’t be considered relevant in this sector. These include basic analytic elements such as recording performance reviews, attendance monitoring, and integration with other HR tools. The report also defines the key criteria, or the features that actively differentiate products within the market and help organizations to choose an appropriate solution. These criteria include: Full employee life cycle tracking Support for different employee types (seasonal or freelance workers) Employee surveys Diversity and inclusion monitoring Stowe also looks at the rapid innovation and em
Post a Comment
Read more