When 80% is really an F. The case for modernizing legacy applications.

[EIC_Alliances]

By Helen Tang

 Well, the challenge hasn’t changed much. Most enterprises a still spending 80% of their and budget on managing existing applications and infrastructure. That leaves only 20% to focus on delivering business value and fostering innovation – THE two key elements that every business must emphasize if it wants to thrive and sharpen its competitive edge.

So how can an enterprise begin to flip the 80/20 mix to devote the majority of their time to the business innovation and not IT management? Recent approaches to Modernizing Traditional Applications (MTA) are showing tremendous promise as an important contributor to making a positive change to the current 80/20 ratio that really translates into a failing grade – a big, fat F - for many organizations. This is especially true of an HPE and Docker approach that we’ll be spotlighting at the following upcoming events:

• The October Docker and HPE Innovation Roadshow
• The October 10 MTA webinar
• DockerCon Europe being held in Copenhagen from October 16 -19.

See the “more information” section at the end of this blog for more details and registration links.

What a team!

HPE and Docker have teamed up to deliver a way to modernize legacy applications, using the portability of Docker containers and integrations with HPE infrastructure to accelerate their deployment to modern composable infrastructure. Containers act as time machines, encapsulating an existing application and then porting it to new hardware of cloud platforms. This all takes place with no change to the application code. Teams can then leverage the fluid IT, and application centric compute, storage and fabric that HPE’s Synergy platform delivers.

What an approach!

The HPE and Docker solution uses a three-step approach to get the job done quickly and reliably:

Step 1 – This first step occurs within MTA. Customers reap immediate benefits from the cost savings, portability and speeds that MTA delivers.  With these new cost savings, IT teams can carve off a piece and re- allocate them to a hardware refresh. They also have the portability required to migrate workloads to the new platform.

Step 2 - After migrating their legacy apps to new containers, teams can leverage the benefits of a modern, integrated platform that require feature a smaller footprint and fewer maintenance hours, while they also minimize complexity. These frees up time for the organization to focus more on delivering business value. In the specific case of the HPE Synergy platform that is an integral element of this solution, enterprises benefit from the integrations that exist between Docker EE and HPE OneView, accelerating provisioning, deployment and time to scale.

Step 3 - Once legacy applications are migrated to the new platform, and the team is using the it to deliver greater business value, teams can begin to adopt a hybrid IT strategy. The portability of Docker containers ensure that the applications can move to any environment, including your favorite cloud service provider. Applications can be migrated easily from on-prem to cloud, and back. Again, with no change to code. This migration is handled via the Docker EE platform.

 What a set of benefits!

By modernizing traditional applications, enterprise teams are able to deliver value to their business in terms of:

• Efficiency – Teams realize an average cost savings of 40-60% cost savings, largely due to the reduction of VMs running within their environment.
• Portability - By placing their legacy applications into containers, teams can move off of legacy platforms like Windows Server 2003, and port app to modern platforms like Windows 2016. All with no change to code
• Security - With the Docker EE platforms, enterprise IT ops teams can utilize an end-to-end software supply chain. Securing their applications, regardless of the underlying infrastructure, while also reducing the attack surface of legacy apps.
• Speed - Teams using Docker have seen a reduction of 99% in the time it takes to deploy, deploy 13x more often and scale apps 99% faster.

Wow, that was fast!

The fastest way to get started with MTA is our HPE Docker MTA Pilot Service. This is a 30-day service which delivers the tools and consulting service to help you containerize your existing applications and begin saving 40-60%. You want results? This service will deliver them.

More information 

The Docker and HPE Innovation Roadshow is a great way to get information on MTA. Here are the dates and locations:

• Tuesday, October 3 - Washington, DC—International Spy Museum. Register here
• Tuesday, October 10 - New Jersey (near NYC)—Liberty Science Center. Register here
• Wednesday October 11 - Boston, MA—9OFS. Register here
• Wednesday, November 8 - Seattle—Safeco Fields. Register here

The event goes from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. You’ll come away with a blueprint for modernizing your application architectures from the application to the infrastructure in just 30 days with HPE and Docker.

We also invite you to attend the October 10 MTA webinar and visit us at Dockercon Europe to speak with the HPE and Docker experts who created this impressive MTA approach.

For complete information on all HPE – Docker joint solutions, visit our strategic alliance page.