Application Modernization and How Transformation Advisor Can Help
Cloud environments and services have exploded the possibilities for deriving value from existing and new data sources. Application requirements in the cognitive era have changed significantly, so in order to respond to this changing market dynamic, businesses must be able to modernize their existing applications while maintaining control of their budgets, managing risk, and investing in new innovations.
What is modernization?
For many, application modernization is an essential part of digital transformation. The challenge is to identify a platform that seamlessly integrates existing and new applications, providing a unified solution that is robust, secure, scalable, and extensible.
Businesses expect faster implementation of new ideas to capture new markets, launch new products, and provide better services. For a company to be able to complete its transformation, it will need to understand its existing applications and how each of them can become part of the new era. By understanding the business, technical, and economic objectives, a company can decide whether an application should be altered or not, and whether it will run best in a private or public cloud environment.
The process of modernizing applications and migrating to the cloud can be a complex undertaking. Careful planning is needed to prepare a business inventory and infrastructure, and to determine the best path forward for each application. If you don't yet have a cloud platform but are ready to begin the assessment for your modernization journey, installing IBM® Transformation Advisor locally can help you get started. If you want to create a pipeline and deploy to the cloud, Transformation Advisor is included with IBM WebSphere Hybrid Edition.
How does Transformation Advisor help?
IBM Transformation Advisor has the capability to quickly evaluate your on-premises applications for rapid deployment on WebSphere Application Server and Liberty on public and private cloud environments. The first step is to download and run a custom discovery tool on your application servers. Results from the scan are uploaded to Transformation Advisor where a detailed analysis is provided.
Transformation Advisor creates a high-level inventory of the content and structure of each application. This information is used to determine complexity and identify the shared library and MQ Queue Manager dependencies for your applications. Transformation Advisor also flags potential issues and estimates a development cost to complete a move to the cloud. Detailed reports with advice, suggestions, and best practices are provided to ensure that the application runs correctly in the preferred cloud environment.
Transformation Advisor helps you on your way to the cloud at these critical stages:
Assessment
- Evaluates applications based on business needs
- Inventories application content and structure
- Assesses migration complexity
- Identifies potential problems for moving to the cloud
Strategic planning
- Identifies key applications that require replacement or upgrade
- Estimates effort for resolving migration issues
- Assesses different modernization options
Execution
- Generates a migration bundle to assist with containerization and deployment
- Creates files tailored to your applications
- Identifies dependencies to help you complete the bundle contents
Java EE application servers
- WebLogic Server Version 6.x+
- IBM WebSphere Application Server Version 6.1, or later
- Red Hat JBoss Version 4.x+
- Apache Tomcat Version 6.0 (and later)
- Java applications directly
Messaging
- IBM Integration Bus Version 10.0
- IBM App Connect Enterprise Version 11.0