Application Migration and Its Best Practices

Application migration describes the procedure of moving an application, along with its associated data and host servers, from one environment into another. As several enterprise organizations have adopted public and private cloud infrastructure, application migrations frequently refer to migrating enterprise applications from on-premise servers into private, public, or hybrid cloud environments.

Application migration is similar to application development, where it requires comprehensive project management and attention to detail. Organizations should follow these best practices when planning and executing any application migration into the cloud.

Planning and Assessment

As organizations prepare to shift applications and other assets into the cloud, it is essential to conduct a full assessment of technological assets, application code, and any related inter-dependencies. Application migration is a complex procedure, and overlooking key details can lead to roadblocks and performance issues that will eventually need to be fixed. IT organizations should obtain a comprehensive overview that includes:

•    Lists of active and inactive servers, applications, and supporting technologies, including those deployed on-premise and in the cloud

•    An inventory of connections and inter-dependencies between applications

•    Accurate data transfer volume statistics that describe the actual demand level that each application is servicing

Application Performance Monitoring

Low-level monitoring tools that offer basic information on CPU usage, network latency or disk space falls short of providing the performance monitoring capabilities required to determine whether your application migration project is succeeding. IT companies should take advantage of a cloud-native analytics platform to reliably measure application performance by collecting and analyzing event logs throughout the cloud infrastructure. System-level resource monitoring can be combined effectively with application monitoring solutions for all leading cloud service providers.

Security Validation

If the application you are migrating into the cloud contains sensitive data, your strategy should include considerations for security validation. IT organizations that start planning about security early in the application migration planning process do the best job. It ensures that the application in its new cloud environment does not contain any vulnerability exploited by hackers who wish to steal data.

Compliance Monitoring and Validation

Regulatory and security compliance are closely linked when it comes to applications hosted in the cloud. Companies that operate in highly regulated industries or who are subject to industry-specific data security and privacy laws should ensure that their compliance status is not threatened at any point in the application migration process. A few instances of possible compliance commitments for your company could include:

•    Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DDS), for companies who collect credit card information from their customers

•    Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), for organizations who collect and store sensitive patient data( for instance, health insurance providers, clearinghouses, and claims processing companies, some health app publishers collect and store the patient’s data)

•    European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), for organizations who collect personal information from customers that live within the European Union

Organizations may also possess data security certifications that require them to follow best practices or meet a defined standard for information security and privacy.