The Challenge
Why Legacy Workloads Hold the Business Back
Older applications are often critical, poorly documented and tied to ageing hardware, which makes them costly to run and risky to move.
Is This Relevant?
Is This Use Case Relevant to Your Organization?
The people, moments and signals that usually bring this need to the surface.
Relevant Teams
- IT and infrastructure leaders
- Application owners
- Finance and procurement
Common Triggers
- Hardware or data center contract renewal
- Operating system or platform end of support
- A cloud-first decision by leadership
Warning Signs
- Rising maintenance costs for old systems
- Applications nobody fully understands
- Changes that take months because of old platforms
Typical Environments
- On-premises data centers and hosted environments
- Hybrid and multi-cloud environments
Benefits
What Better Looks Like
Intended benefits. Actual results depend on your environment and starting point.
Our Approach
A Practical Approach
A staged approach, so each wave is tested before the next begins. Each stage is tailored to your environment.
Assess
Review applications, dependencies, infrastructure and costs.
Prioritize
Rank what you find by business impact, effort and risk, and agree where to start.
Design
Agree the target architecture, the move for each workload and the migration waves.
Implement
Prepare the target environment and migrate workloads wave by wave.
Validate and Optimize
Test functionality, performance and security after each wave.
Solutions
Solutions That Can Help
The solutions that address this use case, starting with the primary one.
Services
How Signisys Can Support You
The services that deliver the approach, from the first assessment to ongoing improvement.
Technology
Technology Options
Where technology fits in the approach. Specific platforms and partner status are confirmed for each engagement.
Before You Start
What to Consider Before Getting Started
A little preparation makes the first assessment faster and its findings more reliable.
- An inventory of applications and their dependencies
- Downtime windows and rollback plans for each workload
- Licensing terms when moving software to the cloud
- Data volumes, transfer time and residency
- Who will own the work and act on recommendations
- Engagement model and ongoing support
Measuring Success
How to Measure Success
Illustrative measures. Agree a baseline first, and keep targets separate from measured results.
Workloads Migrated
The share of planned workloads moved on schedule.
Migration Downtime
Service interruption during each migration wave.
Run Cost
The cost of running each workload before and after the move.
Incidents After Migration
Problems reported in the weeks after each wave.
Our Approach
How We Deliver Results
How Signisys works, from the first assessment to handover and beyond.
FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about this use case.
How do we know a legacy workload should move?
Common signs are ageing or unsupported platforms, rising maintenance costs and applications that are hard to change. An assessment of each workload shows whether to move it, modernize it or retire it.
How is downtime kept to a minimum?
Workloads move in planned waves, with testing before cut-over, agreed windows and a rollback plan for each step.
What information is needed to get started?
A list of applications and servers, known dependencies, business owners, data volumes and any deadlines such as hardware or contract renewals.
Which environments does this apply to?
On-premises and hosted environments moving to public, hybrid or multi-cloud.
How is progress measured?
Agree a baseline for measures such as workloads migrated, migration downtime, run cost and incidents after migration, then track them over time.
Related Content
Related Outcomes, Use Cases and Guides
Where to go next: the outcome this use case supports, nearby scenarios, technology partners and practical guides.
Business Outcome
Modernize IT Infrastructure and Applications
Technology Partner
AWS Solutions and Services
Technology Partner
Microsoft Solutions and Services
Problem Explainer
What Causes Failed Legacy Migrations? Common Problems and Warning Signs
Coming soon
How-To Guide
How to Migrate Legacy Applications and Workloads to the Cloud: A Practical Step-by-Step Guide
Coming soon
Checklist
Migrate Legacy Applications and Workloads to the Cloud Checklist: What IT Teams Should Assess
Coming soon
Decision Guide
How to Choose the Right Approach to Migrate Legacy Applications and Workloads to the Cloud: Options and Trade-Offs
Coming soon
Plan Your Legacy Migration
Share your current challenges and priorities with Signisys to explore an approach suited to your environment.