What is Application Migration: Risks, Strategy, Pattern & Process

Application migration has become a common procedure for organizations that need to improve their app’s speed, performance, and reliability. Moreover, it also lets an organization quickly update apps when required.

Do you also feel like you need to migrate your apps to a different environment but don’t know where to start? Do not worry, you can go through this article to learn everything about the app migration process and the benefits you get from it.

Before diving into more details, first, let’s learn about what exactly is app migration below.

What is Application Migration?

Application migration is the procedure of moving an application from one computing environment to another. Updating an application by migrating it to a whole new environment is a more cost-effective option than rebuilding it.

The main purpose of migrating an app to a new environment is to boost its performance, update it regularly, and make it more scalable.

Types of Application Migration

• From one cloud environment to another
• From one data center to another
• From the public cloud to private or hybrid cloud
• From an on-premises data center to a cloud provider

What is the Application Migration Procedure?

The application migration procedure is covered by the following steps.

Step 1: Access the Applications: Review and access the applications, goals, and teams to develop a migration plan.

Step 2: Use Tools: Check for data migration tools to streamline your data migrating process

Step 3: Perform a Mock Test: Before actual migrating, use a mock migration to test the procedure whether it will be successful or not.

Step 4: Perform Actual Migration: If you did not detect any problems during testing, then you can go forward with the actual migration process.

Step 5: Club Apps Together: Group your apps together and perform migration in phases.

Step 6: Document the Migration Process: Document each phase of migration via a project management tool that can be easily shared with others.

Step 7: Perform Follow Up Tests: Once the migration procedure is completed, perform the follow-up tests to identify whether the data migration process is complete or not.

Top Application Migration Tools to Consider

AWS Application Migration Service

Starting Price

Price on Request

Learn More

Azure Migrate

Starting Price

Price on Request

Learn More

IBM Turbonomic

Starting Price

$ 40000.00      

Learn More

AppDynamics

Starting Price

Price on Request

Learn More

Effective 6 R’s of Application Migration Strategies

Application migration is performed with the help of several strategies like rehost, replatform, refactor, rearchitect, rebuild and replace. Let’s learn about these application migration strategies in detail.

• Rehost: It is also called “lift-and-shift” strategy under which no code changes are made. You just migrate your applications from the existing environment to the new environment.
• Replatform: This strategy comes between Rehosting and Refactoring. You apply a minor code change to the application so that it can be easily migrated to the cloud.
• Refactor: With this strategy, the apps are modified significantly so that it becomes an app developed for the cloud for migration purposes.
• Rearchitect: Under Rearchitecting, your app’s code and functionalities are extended for scaling. This will make sure that the app meets future requirements.
• Rebuild: Under the Rebuild strategy, rather than constantly modifying the app code, the app is rebuilt from scratch to suit the cloud environment.
• Replace: In this strategy, the app is replaced with a new one. This saves valuable app development time.

4 Major Application Migration Risks

When you choose to migrate your applications, you will also come across certain risks such as the app might experience an unexpected downtime or data transfer errors might take place. Additionally, here are some other pitfalls that you might experience while migrating your application.

• Unexpected Downtown: When major changes are made to an application, then there might be unexpected downtime due to compatibility issues. This might slow down the working of an application.
• Technical Challenges: Migrating apps to a new environment might pose some technical challenges for your organization. This is because the app has multiple dependencies and refactoring or replatforming it might get complex and time-consuming.
• Internal Training Issues: The migrated app would require employees to get the proper training to use it effectively. This might increase the training cost for your organization.
• Data Transfer Errors: Issues during data migration can lead to data loss or corruption, compromising data integrity and causing regulatory compliance issues.

Application Migration Use Cases

• Replace legacy systems
• Improve app’s performance
• Access high performing processors
• Access the containerized apps to make changes quickly
• Make the existing application more scalable

Factors to Consider About an App Before Migration

Before the app migration, you should take into consideration the factors like application criticality, complexity, and compliance:

• Application Complexity: Check whether this app developer still works in your company? Does it have available documentation? How many employees are dependent on it within your organization?
• Application Criticality: The app might be critical to use in your organization. So, just check how much downtime your employees can tolerate when operations are disrupted. You should also check whether the app is in its production, development, or testing phase.
• Application Compliance: The app you will be migrating is likely to have some compliance regulations. So, before migrating, you should check the compliance requirements of the application.

Application Migration Best Practices

To make your application migration process as smooth as possible, here are some of the best practices that you can follow:

1. Clearly Define Your Migration Goals

You should clearly define your goals for migration. Are you aiming for cost savings, performance improvement, or modernization? Having a well-defined objective helps guide your strategy.

2. Invest in App Migration Tools

Migrating your apps to a new environment is a complicated procedure. However, if not executed properly, it may lead to costly errors and data loss. Therefore, try using an cloud app migration tool to speed up the procedure.

Benefits of Application Migration Tools

• Automates tasks like code analysis and dependency mapping  
• Performs app testing to identify potential issues  
• Reduces manual data errors  
• Minimizes applications ‘downtime  
• Supports different migration strategies

3. Start with Migrating One App

Instead of migrating multiple apps together, it is better to start migrating with a single app. In this way, you will be identifying migration issues and devising strategies to resolve them at the earliest.

4. Assess Your Application and its Environment

You should always do thorough evaluation of an app and its environment to identify dependencies, IT infrastructure, legacy system, etc. Once you do that, you will be able to plan the migration procedure easily.

5. Create an App Deployment Plan

The app you are planning to migrate have specific server needs and dependencies. Hence, it is better if you create an app deployment plan to streamline the process and help DevOps teams in discovering these requirements.

What is Application Migration: Conclusion

After reading this article, you might have an idea about what app migration is and what procedure you need to follow for the same. However, each app is different, therefore, make sure to look at its server requirements and dependencies before migrating to it.

Moreover, it is better if you use app migration software to streamline your application migrating procedure and reduce data errors.

Application Migration FAQs