Phased approach to modernizing applications in the AWS Cloud - AWS Prescriptive Guidance
Targeted business outcomes

Phased approach to modernizing applications in the AWS Cloud

Vijay Thumma and Ashish Ameta, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

May 2023 (document history)

Modernization requires a multi-dimensional approach to adopt and consume new technology, to deliver portfolio, application, and infrastructure value faster, and to position organizations for scaling at an optimal price. It involves optimizing, maintaining applications, and operating in that modernized model without disruption, and requires that you simplify your business operations, architecture, and overall engineering practices.

Modernization is not just about applications; it requires a modern infrastructure that provides a secure and flexible operations framework. Applications and infrastructure are inseparable when it comes to business process quality, availability, and agility. Modernizing applications without taking infrastructure into account leads to high overall costs and negatively impacts performance and quality. Modern applications are built with a combination of new architecture patterns, operational models, and software delivery processes. They scale up and down from zero to millions of users, manage terabytes (if not petabytes) of data, are available globally, and respond in milliseconds. When you modernize the portfolio of workloads you manage in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud, you replatform, refactor, or replace these workloads by using containers, serverless technologies, purpose-built data stores, and software automation, to gain the fullest agility and total cost optimization (TCO) benefits offered by AWS.

This guide is for application owners, business owners, architects, technical leads, and project managers. It discusses how to develop foundational capabilities for applications selected in the modernization assessment phase, and ways to accelerate modernization efforts by using a phased approach.

The guide is part of a content series that covers the application modernization approach recommended by AWS. The series also includes:

Targeted business outcomes

You should expect the following outcomes from the phased approach to application modernization:

  • Organizational capacity and capabilities to innovate faster, by using the build-and-prove approach and cloud-native architectures such as microservices.

  • A change management and operational model that builds organizational readiness through training and tool improvements.

  • A team approach, which helps deliver initial results in as little as 12 weeks, provides experiential learning, and enables independent, lasting customer success.

  • A composable application architecture based on microservices, APIs, reusable components, and containerization.

  • A scalable modernization roadmap for select strategic applications, which includes prescriptive guidance to work in a split-and-seed model. In this model, modernization capabilities and services are scaled across multiple engineering teams that focus on business outcomes. As new minimum viable products (MVPs) are defined, initial team members split up to create new product teams.