How to protect your legacy IT – in the cloud

If the existing system functionality is not well understood, then transformation plans are compromised by multiple redesigns and scope creep as forgotten requirements are re-discovered, costs rise and deadlines are missed. Nick Denning CEO of Diegesis takes a look at moving legacy IT systems to the cloud for a sustainable future.

It is essential to establish the ‘AS IS’ state, define the ‘TO BE’ state then plan a phased approach from one to the other. Identifying risks, defining contingency plans and spending on mitigation to reduce probability and impact, is essential to manage risks that arise over time.

Systems based on long standing technology, often thought of as legacy, depend on skills of IT professionals who are leaving the workforce. Determining the ‘AS IS’ state is expensive if such knowledge has been lost. New technologies are often alluring, but enthusiasm needs balancing with experience.

Too many transformation strategies involve reducing resources from existing systems, to fund replacements. This means upgrades are not done, security may be compromised and support for additional functionality is ignored because ‘the system is shutting down soon’. In the event of cancellation of the transformation, re-building the ‘AS IS’ system support team could be punitive.

Keeping the lights on

The complexity of the ‘AS IS’ architecture is significant. Most systems have dependencies and every change can trigger others if the environment as a whole is to remain in a supported configuration.

Software needs regular upgrades often addressing security vulnerabilities, products reach end of life and must be replaced, APIs or interfaces change over time, operating system upgrades may require underlying hardware replacements. Treat the transformation as a combined project to maintain the ‘AS IS’, implement the ‘TO BE’, and design the migration, progressively transferring functionality in phases designed and ordered based on a series of business cases.

This sounds complicated and it is. An essential project competence is the ability to understand the complexity of the ‘AS IS’ architecture, closely followed by the ability to communicate those findings to all stakeholders. In a multi-organisation project, the project sponsor has an overarching obligation to ensure objectives are aligned. Otherwise dealing with material issues during the project will be challenging and may require additional funding, causing budget issues.

A broad range of skills is required: knowledge of the ‘AS IS’ system, knowledge of the proposed target ‘TO BE’ system, and above all an excellent project office and design authority who can maintain the integrity of the plan, the quality and technical standards.

This needs a multi-disciplinary team which has:

• Knowledge of the existing technology and business processes
• Experience in developing cloud solutions
• Understanding of DevOps to create an effective and agile development and operational environment to exploit the best of the cloud
• Ability to architect systems that optimise the costs of cloud, keeping flexibility so architectures can be evolved
• Integration specialisms to support the architecture and design the components.

The incumbent team knows the existing systems and technology and can be trained in the target technology, particularly if the teams are seeded with experienced cloud technologists. However, digital transformation typically needs external expertise.

It is vital to look after your existing team, retraining them so they don’t feel threatened, offering incentives to stay to those considering retirement, while bringing in experts for periods to facilitate the transition and knowledge transfer until the business-as-usual team is confident.

Transitioning to the cloud - the reality of experience

Many bespoke systems of the ‘90s implemented functionality which has already been replaced by enterprise systems such as SAP, ORACLE Financials, Salesforce and Xero, many of which are now cloud hosted SaaS.

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If an organisation has bespoke applications developed in-house, the question is if a SaaS solution exists will it support the bespoke solution’s business processes? Buying a standard SaaS product, means a single version of the software used by all with existing standard API’s and people with experience migrating to this ‘TO-BE’ architecture. If not available then migrating the application code for the cloud or re-writing to best exploit new cloud native services will be required.

A common strategy is to migrate current solutions from legacy platforms to VMWare in-house. Once on VMWare those virtual machines can be migrated transparently to the cloud, without even changing IP addresses. Once in the cloud, components can be migrated to the most cost-effective architecture, for example migrating databases to EC2 AMI instances or cloud native RDS databases.

Retaining your essence while remaining secure

An organisation must understand what makes it unique, what its core competencies are, and it must determine how to retain control of its knowledge, methods and IPR so that it can securely operate in the cloud.

GDS lays down a series of standards and practices that all suppliers must abide by, for example to be WCAG 2.1 AA or AAA compliant for all public facing government solutions and to follow the principles of security by design. As Working From Home (WFH) becomes more prevalent it is vital that network security is enhanced by strong VPN technology so that an organisation’s machines are behind a firewall so the risk of intrusion on lightly protected home networks is minimised.

At Diegesis our skills, encompassing many legacy technologies such as Actian-X (Ingres), Informix, IBM MQ Series and Integration Broker, teamed with delivery of cloud solutions on AWS exploiting Open Source and COTS technology, has led us to being engaged on a range of migration and integration projects, helping organisations in cloud transformations. Having people who understand the issues and opportunities and can talk the language of legacy, cloud and end user, addresses a major area of risk when undertaking transformation.

Managing projects for success

Projects live or die on the success of the technical and delivery managers and above all on the ability of the project sponsor to guide the programme around shared goals. Whether using Prince2 or Agile, Waterfall or Scrum, if the requirements and the end point of each phase are not clear then no amount of code is going to lead to a successful project.

Transformation means change over time, so planning, budgeting, project management, people and risk management, contingency and mitigation are as important as ever. In a multi-stakeholder environment, the need to have clear yet flexible contracts appropriate to the project and to manage suppliers to a common outcome becomes critical.

In conclusion

Transitioning to the cloud while maintaining a service to customers is not easy. The wide range of skills needed, often exceeds the capacity of organisations to manage them. At Diegesis we’ve run numerous transformation projects and have the rich experience needed to help implement appropriate strategies to deliver success. Ask the experts – we are here to help.