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Application Migration

Stages, Timeline, Skills and Cost Factors

In IT since 1989 and with over 10 years of experience in cloud computing, ScienceSoft provides comprehensive application modernization and migration services.

Application Migration Guide with Cost Factors - ScienceSoft
Application Migration Guide with Cost Factors - ScienceSoft

Application Migration: the Essence

Application migration is the process of moving software from one computing environment to another. Nowadays, the most popular application migration scenario is moving apps to the cloud (public, private or hybrid) to benefit from greater flexibility and agility and easier innovation.

ScienceSoft helps enterprises and software product companies with end-to-end cloud migration of apps of any complexity.

Time: Around 3-7 months (if without complex reengineering/re-architecting).

Key project steps: Migration prerequisites gathering and high-level planning, migration design and planning, updating application architecture and code, data migration, mock migration and failover testing, migration, testing and going live, decommissioning of an old application/unneeded application parts, continuous support.

Cost: Around $5,000 for lift-and-shift migration of one application and around $20,000 - $100,000 for migration with application re-architecting.

Team: A project manager, a business analyst, a (cloud) solution architect, software and database engineers, IT security specialists, and DevOps engineers.

A Sample Sequence of Application Migration Stages

Application migration stages and their timelines may differ depending on the number of applications under migration, their architecture, legacy software modifications required, migration approach, the complexity of security and compliance requirements, and more. Below are described the typical steps we at ScienceSoft take to perform application migration.

1

Migration prerequisites gathering and high-level planning

2

Migration design and planning

3

Updating application architecture and code (except for purchased enterprise apps)

4

Data migration

5

Mock migration and failover testing (optional)

6

Migration, testing and going live

7

Decommissioning of an old application/unneeded application parts

8

Continuous support

App Modernization and Migration Services by ScienceSoft

With 34 years in IT and over 10 years in cloud computing, ScienceSoft can help with:

Application modernization and migration consulting

  • Analyzing business needs behind migration, the application (application portfolio)  and the related infrastructure.
  • Estimating TCO and ROI.
  • Planning a migration/modernization.
  • Designing a target app architecture.
  • Choosing the cloud platform, CI/CD tools, data storage option, etc.
  • Advising on cost-effective management of modernized applications, and more.
Go for consulting

Application modernization and migration implementation

  • App migration/modernization strategy.
  • Iterative app modernization (including legacy re-engineering and re-architecting).
  • Public/private/hybrid cloud app migration.
  • Decommissioning of old applications/unnecessary software parts.
  • Managed cloud services (ensuring app availability, stability, security, cost optimization, evolution).
Go for implementation

ScienceSoft as a Reliable Application Migration Partner

ScienceSoft has successfully migrated our product from onpremises Microsoft Access to cloud-based Microsoft SQL Server, ensuring uninterrupted, smooth operation and high availability of HR in the new infrastructure.

Communication with ScienceSoft was always fast and solution oriented. Their developers are highly motivated and skilled.

Peter Hermann, CEO , ZEITundZUTRITT GmbH

Why Migrate Apps with ScienceSoft?

  • Over 10 years of experience in cloud development and migration.
  • Expertise with in-depth app modernization and different migration approaches (can be specified after describing projects suggested for CSs).
  • Experience in modernization and migration of application with complex business logic.
  • 15 years’ experience in ITSM.
  • Up to 70-90% automation in our migration projects.
  • ISO 9001 certified quality management, ISO 27001 certified information security management.
  • 10 years in applying DevOps practices.
  • Migration processes are compliant with specific security regulations (SOC, PCI, HIPAA, GDPR, GLBA, etc.).
  • For the second straight year, ScienceSoft USA Corporation is listed among The Americas’ Fastest-Growing Companies by the Financial Times.

Selected App Migration Projects by ScienceSoft

Accounting Software Migration to Azure Cloud

Accounting Software Migration to Azure Cloud

  • Application re-engineering.
  • Moving from desktop to web and cloud (Azure) and redesigning into SaaS with stateless multi-tier architecture.
  • Adding new functionality.
  • Lessening the operating cost through placing audit log in a low-priced Azure Table storage.
  • 100% uptime.
Ecommerce Ecosystem Migration to Amazon Cloud

Ecommerce Ecosystem Migration to Amazon Cloud

  • Migrating several services (a web portal, statistics, payments, commission, mailings and others) running on 20 dedicated servers to AWS (Amazon Web Services), thus ensuring scalability of the Customer’s services.
  • Distributing the data used by one application among a number of external storages, such as Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), RDS (Rational Database Service) and DynamoDB (NoSQL database service).
Training Portal UI/UX Design and Cloud Migration

Training Portal UI/UX Design and Cloud Migration

  • Stabilizing the existing application.
  • Handling a smooth functional modules migration to Azure cloud.
  • Enhancing the overall performance of the web application.

Core Skills in our App Migration Projects

Project Manager

  • Planning the app migration project, assigning tasks to the migration team and overseeing tasks’ execution.
  • Making sure to provide stated project deliverables on time, on budget and of the required quality.
  • Timely updating required stakeholders on the migration project progress.
  • Communicating with cloud providers, SaaS vendors (in case of enterprise apps), and other vendors.

Business Analyst

  • Analyzing business needs triggering the need for migration.
  • Defining the migration scope.
  • Eliciting migration requirements.
  • (optional, for software product migration) Planning the transition to a new business model (e.g., when switching to SaaS).

(Cloud) Solution Architect

  • Drawing up technical requirements for applications under migration.
  • Designing a new cloud environment and how cloud features will be configured and implemented.
  • Deciding on the migration approach (rehosting, replatforming, refactoring, etc.) and the new app architecture.

Software Engineer

  • Applying modern architecture patterns (cloud-native, serverless, etc.) and fitting cloud services to an application under migration.
  • Refactoring and containerizing an application under migration or application parts.

Developer

Code audit of an app under migration, re-coding or introducing code changes. For a repurchased app – configuring and customizing an app to meet new business needs.

Database Engineer

  • Helping decide on the target database platform.
  • Implementing data migration tools.

DevOps Engineer

  • Incorporating an infrastructure-as-code approach.
  • Optimizing orchestration.
  • Automating deployments, incl. introduction of automated testing, CI/CD pipelines.
  • Select and configure tools to monitor performance of a migrated app, detect issues, and provide alerts when those issues arise.

IT Security Specialist

  • Making security recommendations at each stage of the cloud migration process.
  • Setting up network security, access control mechanisms, monitoring and event management for a migrated app.

Sourcing Models for Application Migration

The entire migration process is in-house

Pros:

  • Full control over the migration process and team productivity.

Cons:

  • Migration activities can require specific skills that will not be needed after migration.
  • (for enterprises) IT department may have to give up other priority projects to carry out migration/modernization.
  • All hiring and managerial efforts are on your side.

Partial or full outsourcing of technical resources

Pros:

  • Quick project ramp-up.
  • Optimal resource utilization.
  • Wide migration expertise of the outsourced team helps anticipate possible problems in migration.

Cons:

  • Partial or total project team coordination, quality control and risk management are required from your side.

Full migration process outsourcing

Pros:

  • A vendor assumes full responsibility for the team assembly and management and the quality of migration.
  • Established migration planning and execution.

Cons:

  • High migration/modernization vendor risks.

Benefits of App Migration with ScienceSoft

No long downtimes during migration

To minimize operational downtimes, we split the cloud migration process into clear, manageable parts and are always ready to roll back. Also, we employ automated tests to check the changes promptly, frequently and comprehensively.

Reduced migration and consumption costs

We devise a pragmatic cloud migration strategy to cut down on development costs. We automate resource orchestration and select cloud services to reduce cloud consumption costs.

Safe migration of legacy apps

To smoothly substitute the legacy application, we mine business rules from existing application code and documentation, investigate code dependencies and component integrations. We readily cooperate with IT departments and other employees as well as third-party vendors, customer's partners, and other people knowledgeable of the application work.

Reliability

We design failure-proof cloud apps backed with app performance management processes to enable troubleshooting activities without interrupts and suggest app recovery techniques.

Cloud Environment We Recommend for Application Migration

At ScienceSoft, we primarly choose one of the Big 3 cloud platforms to migrate apps to:

Amazon Web Services

Best for: migrating large-scale applications

Description

  • For 10 years in a row, AWS has led Gartner’s vendor evaluation for both cloud infrastructure and platform services.
  • 175+ services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).
  • 77 availability zones to deploy applications in for enhanced fault tolerance and low latency.

Microsoft Azure

Best for: migrating apps with strict compliance requirements

Description

  • Second in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Services.
  • 200 + services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).
  • 60+ availability zones for application deployment.
  • Offers industry-best 99.99% VM uptime.
  • Has industry-largest 90+ compliance certifications.

Google Cloud Platform

Best for: migration projects requiring app containerization

Description

  • Third in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Services.
  • 100+ services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).
  • 73 availability zones to deploy applications in.
  • A strong offering in containers (Google Kubernetes Engine fully managed by the Google SRE (Site Reliability Engineers) team; Google Cloud Run, etc.).

Pricing

Check prices.

Need Help in Choosing the Cloud?

ScienceSoft’s experienced cloud consultants and architects can help you choose the best-fitting cloud platform for you app migration project.

Cost of Application Migration to the Cloud

Major migration cost factors

  • Scope of migration (several applications, one application, one/several app modules, etc.).
  • Complexity of applications and their dependencies.
  • The volume of data involved; cloud providers’ fees for data transfer.
  • Target app deployment option (public, private, hybrid cloud).
  • The life span of the application and its migration readiness (technology gaps).
  • App availability requirements.
  • The scope of code-level modifications required.
  • Code conversion, including manual efforts (when opting for a different programming language).
  • The extent of migration automation and the cost of migration automation software licenses.
  • Unit, system, and performance testing coverage.
  • Cloud services costs.

Major post-migration cost factors

  • Infrastructure costs, monthly/yearly application and its infrastructure support and maintenance costs.
  • IT support team training.
Pricing Information

The cost of application migration to the cloud ranges between $5,000 and $100,000. The cost of lift-and-shift migration of one application starts at $5,000 while the migration requiring application re-architecting costs $20,000–$100,000 depending on app complexity. The final app migration costs will also include the price for new infrastructure and cloud platform services.

Need to plan your app migration budget?

Get a quote

Want to Understand the Cost of Your Cloud Migration?

Please answer a few questions prepared by ScienceSoft's consultants.

Within 24 hours, our team will carefully review your cloud migration needs and calculate a custom quote. We'll send it to your email completely free of charge.

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What do you plan to move to the cloud?

*Where do you host your IT infrastructure now?

Please specify the size of servers.

*Where do you host your data storage now?

Are you planning to increase the load on your data storage after the migration?

*What is the size of your data storage?

*Where do you host your applications now?

What architectures do your applications have?

Are you planning to increase the load on your application after the migration?

Do you have any considerations regarding the migration strategy?

?

Rehosting and relocating involve transferring applications and data storages to the cloud or another cloud with minimal to no changes, while not fully utilizing cloud-native features. Refactoring, re-architecting, and rebuilding involve varying degrees of modification to optimize applications or data storage systems for the cloud, from minor adjustments to a complete redesign using using advanced cloud services.

*What environments are you planning to have in the cloud?

*How many clouds are you planning to use?

Do you need to build an efficient CI/CD process after the migration?

Do you plan to implement patterns for high availability, fault tolerance, scalability and disaster recovery?

Do you want to implement automated monitoring of your assets in the cloud?

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ScienceSoft's experts will study your case and get back to you with the details within 24 hours.

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About ScienceSoft

With 34 years in IT, ScienceSoft is an established US-headquartered provider of cloud migration and app modernization services. Our approach to application migration resides in maximum migration automation and gradual transition from one stable state to the next, which helps migrate applications with minimal disruption, fewer risks, and lower costs. As the holder of ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certifications, we rely on mature quality management and guarantee the cooperation doesn't pose any risks to the customers' data security.