Application Modernization Assessment: Is It TIME?

Application modernization assessment using the Gartner TIME framework will give you a clear warning about when business transformation is becoming a priority for your organization. Discover how you can use TIME to help your business thrive.

An application modernization or cloud readiness assessment can help you to determine how much technical debt your organization has accumulated, and just how pressing an issue business transformation is. Once you've completed your app mod due diligence, the best-practice method for carrying out application modernization is Gartner's TIME framework, backed up by the '6Rs' designed by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

These methodologies help you assess your software application portfolio in order to determine which applications are helping your business to thrive, and which are holding you back. Taking that intelligence, you can then optimize your IT landscape to ensure it's driving innovation and agility in your business.

Before you can carry out that transformation, however, you need comprehensive information about your application portfolio, including legacy applications that your organization has forgotten about. Researching your application portfolio and compiling the results in a repository to get a complete picture of your landscape requires the right tools, and an Excel spreadsheet won't cut it.

To find out how SAP LeanIX can empower you to call up an application modernization assessment at a moment's notice, download our report:

GARTNER REPORT: How To Choose The Right Approach For Application Modernization And Cloud Migration

What Is Application Modernization?

We're living in an age of digital innovation. Technology that was cutting edge ten years ago is now barely sufficient to support a business.

Yet, this legacy technology was also created long before we were able to predict such rapid advancement. Older technology was, therefore, never intended to keep up with the pace of change, or develop and improve over time.

Fixing that issue isn't just about upgrading your technology to newer versions once. You need to leverage technology that supports innovations like artificial intelligence (AI), is going to remain best-of-breed long into the future, and is flexible enough to replace easily when the time comes.

This technology will be expensive, however, and you will need to play a constant balancing act between investing in best-of-breed technology and getting the most value out of that investment. Achieving that means remaining constantly aware of the return on investment that your application portfolio is providing.

Constantly monitoring your application landscape like this requires a tool that can overcome the challenges that are concealing the data you need to see. To find out how to overcome the barriers, download our infographic:

INFOGRAPHIC: Breaking Barriers To Application Modernization

Cloud Readiness Assessment

A cloud readiness assessment tests whether an application, IT component or an interface is ready to support cloud computing. This is the first stage in any cloud migration, as you will first need to determine how much effort the transformation will entail and how urgent it is.

READ: App Modernization - Have You Completed A Cloud Readiness Assessment?

There are a variety of options for cloud assessment, but generally the checklist will include nine values:

1. The business objective of the migration
2. Current network load and dependencies
3. Mission-critical applications that must not face downtime
4. Cloud compatibility of each application
5. Compliance with cloud regulation
6. Freedom of data transition to new system
7. Migration strategy and timeline
8. Stakeholder buy-in
9. The budget required

Once you have all of this information for each application, then you can begin a process to determine which applications to migrate. Usually this will involve a combination of Gartner's TIME framework and Amazon's 6Rs.

To complete a cloud-readiness assessment of an item in your IT landscape, you can use SAP LeanIX. To find out more, watch our on-demand webinar:

LeanIX: How to start your cloud transformation journey the right way

The Gartner TIME Framework

Gartner's TIME framework provides the methodology for optimizing your application portfolio to best support your activities. It does this by assessing your software applications according to two criteria:

• Technical fit relates to the quality of the application
• Functional fit is how well the application aligns to your business' needs and required capabilities

By rating each application against these factors, you can place them on a matrix that will assign them to one of four categories, forming the TIME acronym:

• Applications with high technical fit, but low functional fit will be Tolerated
• Applications with high technical fit and high functional fit will be Invested in
• Applications with low technical fit and high functional fit will be Migrated
• Applications with low technical fit and low functional fit will be Eliminated

• Tolerate - accept the application in its current state for the time being
• Invest - prioritize in gaining maximum value from this application
• Migrate - work on finding a better application to fulfill this need
• Eliminate - remove the application as it is not needed or desirable

Once this process has been completed, you can be assured that your application portfolio has been optimized to support your business needs. Using the information stored in an instance of the SAP LeanIX repository, making this analysis will take minimal effort.

Since it's now so easy, you can make carrying out a TIME analysis a regular activity for your organization, ensuring your application portfolio remains perfect for your needs and within your budget. This gives you a constant competitive advantage in the market.

To learn more about leveraging SAP LeanIX to run a TIME analysis of your organization, read our guide:

EXPERT GUIDE: Applying The Gartner TIME Framework For Application Rationalization

AWS 6 Rs Framework

An essential part of any application modernization process will be leveraging cloud computing. Moving a key selection of applications and processes into the cloud can reduce costs, improve scalability, and unlock innovation.

As such, cloud experts Amazon Web Services (AWS) designed an updated version of the TIME framework that's focused on cloud migration. The six steps of the process each begin with the letter R, so it's known as the '6Rs'.

Unlike the TIME framework, there's no particular criteria to the 6Rs, allowing you the freedom to assess each application on its own merits. Look at each application and assign one of the following six categories to each:

Rehost

This is the option to simply lift and shift your existing application into the cloud in exactly the state it is in under your current on-premise setup. This is usually reserved for best-of-breed applications that are already cloud-optimized, as few legacy applications will be effective in the cloud.

Replatform

Replatform refers to perfecting the IT components that empower your applications. When replatforming, you upgrade the hardware, operating system, or physical setup of an application, without changing the software.

Re-architect

Re-architect is the opposite of replatform, where you change the architecture of the application itself. This is usually done to optimize the application for use in the cloud.

Repurchase

This is where an on-premise application is retired and replaced with a cloud-based version of the software. This will usually be a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application.

Retire

Matching the TIME 'Eliminate' option, this means removing the application from your portfolio. You must first, however, be certain that you can remove the application without impacting the rest of your landscape.

Retain

This maps to the 'Tolerate' option under TIME. This is where you leave the application in its current state until the return on investment drops below acceptable levels.

For more information on enacting the 6Rs using SAP LeanIX, download our white paper:

White Paper: The 6Rs - A Basic Framework For Application Modernization

How SAP LeanIX Supports Application Modernization Assessment

Before you can run an application modernization assessment using either TIME or the 6Rs, you need to complete a cloud readiness assessment to do your app mod due diligence and gain a detailed picture of your application portfolio, IT components, and business priorities. All of this can be tracked and assessed within SAP LeanIX.

You can then plan out your application modernization initiative in a sandbox environment based on the real data of your application portfolio. That data can then be re-used to continue to monitor your portfolio into the future.

To find out more about building an application modernization road map within SAP LeanIX, download our white paper:

WHITE PAPER: Create An Application Modernization Road Map