Modernize Your Java EE Apps for the Cloud With a Single Click

Simplify application modernization of Java EE apps with IBM Cloud Transformation Advisor

You have teams of Java EE (JEE) developers that run your business. You are also building teams who have fully embraced cloud computing with native cloud development leveraging a burgeoning portfolio of cloud-based services. Synergy across your organization is the key to speed and innovation when delivering new features to your customers, whether it’s the latest mobile application or smart advisors based on machine learning technology leveraging your existing data.

IBM Cloud Private provides you a platform to focus on both areas while having a common management layer. As part of IBM’s efforts to simplify application modernization of Java EE apps, IBM Cloud Transformation Advisor is available to all IBM Cloud Private customers at no additional charge.

IBM Cloud Transformation Advisor simplifies your journey to cloud

Have you tried moving your on-prem JEE application to containers? There are not only several steps involved, but it also requires a high degree of familiarity with the various Docker and Kubernetes concepts. As depicted below, IBM Cloud Transformation Advisor simplifies, and in many cases automates, the process for you:

In general, Transformation Advisor assists with these three steps:

1. Transformation Advisor categorizes your applications as simple, moderate, and complex based on its migration complexity.

2. Next, it generates all the artifacts that would be needed to deploy the application onto WebSphere Liberty in IBM Cloud.

3. Then, with the click of a button, you can automatically deploy the applications that meet certain criteria onto IBM Cloud Private.

Migrating the complex application migration scenarios

For migrations that are classified as moderate or complex, Transformation Advisor provides insights into the set of incompatibilities that exist between your current app and the APIs available on the Liberty runtime. To remediate them, you need access to the source code of your application to make the necessary changes. You can then leverage the built-in automation to containerize and deploy the application onto IBM Cloud Private with a single click. To start your dev team’s continuous integration and deployment journey, Transformation Advisor also sets up a devops pipeline.

Migrating JBoss and WebLogic applications to IBM Cloud

Transformation Advisor is not limited to WebSphere—it also supports JBoss and WebLogic applications.

The effort to modernize your JEE app depends on the application server it was designed to run on. The good news is that Transformation Advisor has the smarts to provide recommendations for all three application servers. It can detect APIs that your app is using that are not available on Liberty, like JAX-RPC. In addition, it can also identify WebLogic and JBoss-specific APIs that your app might be using. When possible, Transformation Advisor also provides guidance on the equivalent APIs that your application can use on WebSphere Liberty (like JAX-WS instead of JAX-RPC).

Our experts will help you

“TCS and IBM are partnering to help enterprises create new applications and modernize existing ones to drive innovation and improve time to market.”

—Suranjan Chatterjee, Global Business Unit Head, Cloud Applications and Migration, TCS

Our IBM Cloud experts have extensive experience helping customers develop business applications leveraging our middleware capabilities and cloud. They have documented their architectures and practices on the IBM Garage Method application modernization website. You can freely leverage this information to guide your modernization journey. In addition, should you need help, IBM acceleration services are available for a broad spectrum of use cases at each stage of the cloud adoption journey. They provide access to deep skills and experience, field-tested best practices, an exclusive relationship with product development and support teams, and rock-solid solution delivery.

IBM also has extensive network of partners and System Integrators to help you in your journey to cloud. For example, Tata Consulting Services (TCS) joins forces with IBM to deliver a synergistic strategy for application modernization.

We have several customers that are embracing IBM Cloud while leveraging the capabilities that we are providing for application modernization. One such customer is Ilmarinen, based in Finland. They manage the pension fund of almost 900,000 Finns and are a user of IBM Cloud Private. They had several applications on traditional WebSphere Application Server and were able to migrate them to WebSphere Liberty on IBM Cloud Private successfully.

To see IBM Cloud Transformation Advisor in action, watch the webinar Migrating WebSphere apps to IBM Cloud Private. For those of you who want a hands-on experience, try the developerWorks recipe.