The term legacy application is used for the obsolete or outdated software applications of a business that either no longer serves its purpose, or do not meet the current requirements. They are usually industry-specific and on-premise applications that have been adopted and used by businesses for many years. However, legacy systems cannot be easily replaced.

The process by which a company moves its legacy system to the cloud is known as legacy system migration. It involves moving outdated programs, applications, or other software used by the company from on-premise servers to the cloud server.

In this article, we will discuss the necessity of migrating legacy systems and how to build the roadmap of cloud migration.

 

Why businesses should migrate their legacy applications?

Certain symptoms like repeated rebooting or restarting of the computer, complicated processes for onboarding new users or malfunctioning of backup management can be an indicator that the business processes need to update old systems.

Often, companies cannot anticipate the inevitability of system upgradation, but these annoying technological issues might be the ultimate push for a business transformation. Let us understand how legacy system migration to the cloud can benefit the overall business.

1. Cost-effective

The maintenance costs behind IT infrastructure are quite high. Infrastructure is one of the most vital aspects of the IT budget. Thus, investing in it over a cloud system might not be a great idea when considering cost management. Maintaining old hardware year after year might affect your profit margin. By opting for cloud computing, you are using the infrastructure offered by the cloud service providers which cuts down your maintenance and licensing costs. It also reduces your overhead IT costs as you need to pay only for the services you avail.

2. Data protection

Typically, data security issues are common for legacy systems. Apart from being not very well-protected, often legacy systems cannot be updated. This leads to businesses being vulnerable to data theft, intellectual and identity theft, viruses, and data losses. Legacy software usually does not come with a data recovery strategy or at the least a reliable backup. Thus, data protection and restoration can be better managed with data migration to cloud premises than legacy systems.

3. Slow system

Since legacy systems are based on old software, they usually require much more time to load and are much slower compared to newer systems. It takes quite an effort for the legacy systems to run large chunks of data and applications, and thus, are not able to compete against the latest advanced platforms. Legacy system migration to the cloud servers can solve this issue as the users can access data as and when required with fast cloud computing.

4. Non-compatibility issues

Legacy systems have compatibility issues with modern IT infrastructure. Typically, they are non-compatible with SaaS applications, updated operating systems, smartphones, mobile devices, and other such latest platforms. Hence, many companies are forced to opt for an IT environment that they are unnecessary as per their requirements. Cloud migration of legacy systems upgrades the entire IT infrastructure of the business allowing the configuration of an environment that can ensure seamless compatibility for the entire business operation.

5. Technology at your service

While it is a time-consuming process to track and update on-premise systems and often engages business time, with cloud computing updating and upgrading is a continuous process and hardly calls for business downtime. Cloud services and applications are in the constant process of improvement based on user feedback and in many instances, the applications are upgraded automatically. The legacy system migration to a cloud system is known to provide an optimal work environment through shared resources, collective insights, updates, features, and new improvements.

6. Mobility

Data from cloud servers can be used by anyone from anywhere. Irrespective of the devices used cloud servers respond to all. While legacy systems can be accessed only by Windows devices, data stored in the cloud can be accessed from any device whether it is a mac or mobile device. Cloud data is available 24/7 and can be used and shared by multiple users at the same time.

 

Related Post: 5 Key Steps for Successful Cloud Migration

 

Best Practices for Building a Roadmap for Cloud Migration

Legacy system migration has many advantages as seen above, but without a definite roadmap to cloud migration, the business might suffer certain issues like data loss or might compromise the proper business operation. Our primary motive here is to safely move our data to an advanced platform without a hiccup.

Thus, to make your business migration a success and derive the maximum benefit from the migration you need to carefully strategize your migration process. Follow the steps stated below to construct a definite roadmap to your legacy system migration.

1. Set up clear objectives

First and foremost, the thing that must be considered during legacy system migration is identifying the objectives of the migration process. You have to start with an understanding of cloud migration and the benefits that it can provide your business. Then, factors such as evaluating your final IT goals, estimating the financial aspect, detecting the step-by-step procedures, observing team readiness, and setting up priorities would follow.

2. Plan your migration

A clear set plan of action is a necessity for successful cloud migration. It helps to detect and minimize the risk factors during the migration process. This allows you to eliminate vulnerabilities in the process. It is best to write down the steps of the plan sequentially so that you have a clear picture of your plan and can evaluate and re-evaluate it before the actual execution. You can also do this with the help of a specialist migration provider.

3. Initiate the migration process

It is important to oversee the entire migration process at the time of execution, from initiation to completion. You can hire a professional to initiate and track the process. You can build and maintain the process outline to track the progress of everyone involved in the migration.

4. Establish risk management

If you want to establish a successful migration, then this is an essential step that cannot be skipped. Detecting and minimizing workflow disruptions is a must for a high-quality process. The steps that can ensure risk management are:

• Detect sensitive data, analytics, and conduct data monitoring,
• Adopting third-party tools can also establish security,
• Take the life cycle approach for cloud governance,
• Use automation to directly attach governance feedback to the process.

5. Optimize and scale the cloud system

The final step of the roadmap involves evaluating the workflow performance and scaling up the system. Investing in cloud strategies, creating comprehensive objectives for the team, and organizing the optimization and evolving the cloud system, are the steps to achieve this element.

 

Related Post: Cloud Migration Strategy: 5 Points to Consider

 

Conclusion

Legacy system migration to the cloud servers is the easiest and most efficient solution to combat the issues that come with legacy systems. Yet, the migration process can be a daunting task and it is always better to seek help from experts. Dignitas Digital is a company that caters authority in this field through AWS cloud migration.

We at Dignitas Digital, have a team of resourceful professionals who have already successfully served more than a dozen clients with cloud migration through a correct and transparent roadmap. All you need to do is decide on the migration and contact us for high-end assistance in the entire procedure.