Application modernization success story!

The process of updating legacy applications' internal architecture, platform infrastructure, and/or functionalities is known as application modernisation. Currently, much of the conversation about application modernization is concentrated on monolithic, on-premises applications, which are typically updated and maintained using waterfall development processes, and how those applications can be adapted to cloud architecture and release patterns, specifically microservices and DevOps.

The advantages of application modernization can typically be summed up as increasing the speed at which new features are delivered, making it possible for other services to consume the functionality of existing applications through APIs, and moving applications from on-premises to the cloud to improve application scale and performance as well as long-term data centre and IT strategy.

Usually, the costs and complexity of application modernisation are the biggest obstacles. Applications should not be moved from on-premises to the cloud only for the sake of moving them. In contrast, other applications may gain significantly from re-platforming or rearchitecting but are so tightly integrated with current infrastructure and systems that the complexity of modernization may outweigh the advantages.

Like most things, the secret to application modernization success is a strategy and choosing projects where the advantages of cloud, speed, performance, scale, new feature development, etc. offer the given application a clear route to improved user experience and ROI.

Customer Introduction

The Customer has grown into a neighbourhood pharmacy for millions of consumers worldwide. Searching for ways to serve customers’ health needs better while embracing the efficiency of the cloud; the Customer worked with Alif Consulting to migrate a pharmacy warehouse inventory management system to Azure Kubernetes Service and Azure Database for MySQL – Flexible Server. With this fully managed Compute and Database as a Service (DBaaS) in place, Customer has achieved automatic scaling, disaster recovery, and significant cost savings in a smaller footprint.

The customer delivers care like no one else can, helping customers improve their health by lowering costs, increasing access to care, and acting as a trusted partner. As part of that commitment, the Customer is on a digital transformation journey, rolling out cloud-based solutions to better serve individuals.

Customer Challenges

• 150 Warehouses to maintain the network and connectivity.
• Running Multiple Datacentre for multiple applications and databases instance.
• Disaster Recovery solution is too complicated.
• Maintenance and Operational Cost is too high.
• A Large team is required to maintain, upgrade and sync the data across the data centres.
• No way of modernising infrastructure and cost optimization.?

Customer Requirements

• Consolidation of all applications to a smaller footprint
• Compliance and security were paramount to protecting health information.
• Meet all HIPAA and HITRUST requirements.
• The solution should be supportive for Scale-in and Scale-out whenever needed.
• The solution should meet all the networking securities.?
• Minimize the overall Infra, maintenance and operation cost.
• Minimize the infra-provisioning time.

Solution Overview

As part of the application migration, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) was chosen as a deployment platform. AKS helped minimise infrastructure maintenance and provided an automated upgrade, repair, monitoring, scaling, and code-to-code cloud pipelines and guardrails.

After working closely with Alif Consulting teams, the Customer leveraged Azure Kubernetes Service. These platforms provide Customer with a fully managed experience for both computing and databases.

The customer migrated all application instances and reorganised them to align with 10 Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) nodes in a single cluster, fully eliminating the cost of maintaining and managing application hosting environments. AKS allows for automatic rapid scaling up or down to meet demand, while node pooling allows for more processing power. “Now, everything can be done in a few clicks.

Solution Design?

Design Principles

1. Design for automation – AKS is used to do the automation job. 10 AKS nodes are created on a cluster to run the application with minimum infrastructure and spending. AKS allows for automatic rapid scaling up or down to meet any demand, while node pooling allows for more processing power be smart with state
2. Be smart with state – All application state is hosted on Azure Postgres SQL. This allows us to do scaling, Repair, Roll-back, and load balancing across the AKS Nodes and clusters.
3. Favour managed services – Most of the services within the design are managed services which allow us to force more on the application side with less overhead of managing the infrastructure and doing the operational work.
4. Practice defence in depth – Defence in depth is enabled by using the Firewall, Application Gateway, Azure policies, Azure AD B2B, Azure AD B2C, Microsoft Defender for cloud and limited exposure to the Internet.
5. Always be architecting – Current design to not restricted to the current solution and allow to customer to refine, simplify and improve the architecture of the application as the needs of the organization change, the landscape of your IT systems change, and the capabilities of your cloud provider itself change.

Outcome

As soon as the migration was complete, the customer immediately realized the benefits. The new system provides a smaller footprint at a lower maintenance cost while meeting the core objectives of efficiency, scalability, and high availability.

The customer can easily monitor all processes, services, APIs, and alerts, making management much more straightforward than before. And security capabilities, including Oauth, Azure Key Vault, and symmetric/asymmetric encryption, keep customers compliant with all required regulations.