A successful transformation strategy, for transacting digitally at scale, requires the infrastructure resilience, scalability, and elasticity inherent in cloud platforms. Cloud adoption, combined with a microservice application architecture, offers a solution which is nimble and optimized for cost-effectiveness and operational efficiency.
Organizations engaging in application migrations to the cloud, without the proper tools for managing the complexity of developing the artifacts executing on these platforms, run the risk of a long, tedious, and error-prone journey. Automation and standardization at various stages of the transformation have proven to be the key ingredients for an accelerated and successful journey.
Technology teams will need to build a delivery model where the components for enabling and accelerating transformation are planned from the get-go. They will need to:
- Define an application migration strategy to the cloud. Any transformation requires upfront planning for the old technology base to seamlessly coexist with the new one, while the latter incrementally takes over. Transitional application architectures need to be defined early, based on an overall target architecture blueprint and on a prioritized list of business capabilities to be delivered on the new platform.
- De-risk the cloud journey by leveraging cloud-native standards and best practices. Systems built on cloud native standards and best practices exploit the full capabilities of the cloud computing model, inheriting cloud characteristics such as resilience, large scale, zero down time, and agility for rapid change. Leveraging proven cloud frameworks reduces development time, allows focus on the business functionality, and accelerates delivery to the cloud.
- Adopt an application decomposition methodology. A systematic approach for breaking down monolithic applications into smaller units accelerates the transformation required for lightweight packaging of services into containers for cloud deployment.
- Leverage coding automation to accelerate development and minimize developer variations at the coding level. Separating business logic and automating the generation of generic service code, according to the organization’s standards, ensure the utilization of standardized coding structures, minimizing errors and establishing development governance.
- Adopt a cloud-based continuous integration and delivery pipeline. Implement a self-serve elastic and scalable automated delivery pipeline to accelerate development and deliver application services at high velocity.
- Introduce automated testing with code coverage reporting capabilities. Introducing a code test coverage pass-percentage criteria in the code build pipeline, coupled with security code scanners, prior to committing code to the main development branch, promotes faster remediation and turn-around times.
- Establish an integrated delivery management environment. A toolset that integrates end-to-end planning, code build tracking, and delivery management speeds project execution and ensures transparency and predictability at all levels.
About Next Pathway
Next Pathway is the Automated Cloud Migration company. Powered by the SHIFT™ Migration Suite, Next Pathway automates the end-to-end challenges companies experience when migrating applications to the cloud. For more information, please visit nextpathway.com.
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