Have you ever contemplated the number of apps you use at work over the course of a single day? At the very least, you probably use an email client, a word processor and a tool for creating visual presentations—but perhaps you also lean on a business intelligence tool or an HR service portal to fulfill your professional duties. Even the most basic users run a handful of apps at any time, and each user has his or her own unique instance of those apps running at once.
Synchronizing data from all the apps in your organization is a significant challenge, but so is managing updates, releases, and security at the same time. Your best hope for success is to migrate everything to a platform that enables comprehensive administration of apps, data and servers in one place. This is precisely what you can achieve with Azure.
App Discovery
Your IT department is no doubt aware of all the apps in your ecosystem, but before a migration you need to know everything about your apps—down to the smallest details. This requires a deep analysis of all the software your business is running on both physical and virtual servers.
With Azure, you have access to a whole suite of tools that can help you do the following:
Catalog servers and their locations
Map applications to the servers supporting them
Asses options for moving apps from physical to virtual servers
One of the major advantages of using these tools is that they can guide you in defining a solid strategy for complete migration, helping you identify appropriate steps along the way. This will build your confidence in the overall migration process, which is designed to minimize the risk of data loss and ensure proper data transfer.
App Organization
In a hybrid cloud environment, it is important to determine up front which apps will be hosted in the cloud and which will remain on premises. Migrating to Azure presents you with a unique opportunity to reorganize your apps in a way you may never have otherwise considered.
However, no matter where you decide to house your apps, it is important to note the following restrictions of Azure App Service:
- Bindings are exclusive to port 80 for HTTP and port 443 for HTTPS
- Azure Active Directory authentication is required for all apps on the cloud
- No more than one application is allowed per site
Rather than viewing these features as limitations, you can see them as potential unifiers for your app architecture. In fact, these rules can help you attain much more streamlined IT operations.
App Integration
While your apps may be the main point of interaction for your users, there is far more to your system than merely a front end. Apps cannot function without receiving and generating data, and both data and apps require storage and computing power to perform their functions. Azure offers remarkable economy of scale when apps, data and servers migrate together.
As you proceed towards app migration, it will be well worth your time to examine the benefits you stand to gain from migrating more of your system to Azure. With the platform’s powerful planning tools, straightforward server migration and emphasis on security, your migration experience does not have to be painful.
Migration Assistance
Even with the many tools and resources available, migrating your apps to Azure warrants the attention and partnership of an expert. At Trianz, our migration specialists have years of experience working with Fortune 1000 clients to strategize the best path to migration to match their diverse situations.
No matter how many apps you use each day, you and those who work for you require reliability and functionality to execute their jobs. With our seasoned consultants harnessing the power of Azure, you can achieve this—all in confidence that your apps, data and servers will remain secure throughout the process.
