The document discusses the migration of legacy systems to modern cloud-based applications, emphasizing the challenges and benefits of such a transition. It explores various migration strategies like lift-and-shift, replatforming, and refactoring, while highlighting the importance of security, monitoring, and risk assessment during the migration process. Additionally, it mentions leveraging tools like CloverDX to enhance productivity and accommodate complex scenarios with a focus on data management.

1. Avoiding risk when
moving legacy apps to
the cloud
Kevin Scott, CloverDX

2. Migration from legacy system
Legacy system New system
Required for correct functioning of the
organization
Migrate
Has not been modernized in a long
time, runs on outdated platform
In-house or heavily customized
Holds business critical data – CRM,
ERP, billing…
Modern, more capable system
Often cloud-based
Provides business benefit like better
reporting, data quality, visibility, …

3. Legacy application no longer maintainable
Support getting expensive
Legacy application does not work well with our newer applications
o May require outdated platform to run on, including thick client
o Does not integrate well with our other cloud-based systems
New platforms may expedite support of mobile apps
Legacy application missing features users have come to expect
(e.g Search, Recommendation engine, AI-inspired analytics)
Why move

4. On-prem infrastructure is expensive: time, people, money
Cloud availability is higher than most on-prem solutions
o On-prem “data centre” might have power outages, networking issues
On-prem security is hard
o Especially if you host something (applications, APIs, file downloads)
You want to use or provide a shared service
o SaaS applications, APIs, etc.
OK, move but why to the cloud?

5. Higher effort and cost
More cloud benefits
Lower effort and cost
No cloud benefits
Retire Lift & shift Replatform
Repurchase
Do nothing Refactor
Keep existing
apps without
change.
Stop using an
application that
is no longer
needed.
Move app into
IaaS with
minimal rework.
Buy a new
application to
replace the old
one.
Replace parts
of the app with
cloud-based
equivalents.
Rebuild the app
to use as many
cloud-native
services as
possible.

6. Different ways of building applications
Greater agility
Lower complexity, easier to run
Miniservices Microservices
(Macro) Services

7. Simple in-house application
o Connect to HubSpot, pull data, produce reports and send them via email.
In-house application
Virtual machine
Internal data center
PostgreSQL

8. No change in the code, just configuration
Move business logic and database to cloud versions of the same
o VM moved to EC2 instance, database is still the same, but managed in cloud
Lift-and-shift migration architecture
EC2 instance
AWS
RDS PostgreSQL

9. Using many different services, all managed
More robust and scalable, automated instead of manual reporting
Rearchitect to cloud-native app

10. Purchase a SaaS-based product to replace your current system
Likely requires compromise on feature set
Removes burden of design, operation, maintenance of replacement
Replacement
Cloud
3rd Party Cloud
Application

11. Backup
Keep backups of everything you
can. In many cases this can be
automated.
Watch out for backup sizes and
pricing for that.
Skills
Using cloud you trade “sysadmin”
and similar skills for “cloud
expert”.
Regionality
Not all features are available in
all regions – different instance
types, services and so on. This is
not documented L
Monitor
Monitor spending via billing
alarms to prevent massive
charges for misconfigured or
forgotten services.
Secure
Expect attacks on your services.
Use encryption and credential
managers. Limit permissions as
much as possible.
Test
Test failure modes that are not
present in on-prem solution:
network issues, resources
disappearing, …
Assess/minimize risks when moving

12. Backup
Keep backups of everything you
can. In many cases this can be
automated.
Watch out for backup sizes and
pricing for that.
Skills
Using cloud you trade “sysadmin”
and similar skills for “cloud
expert”.
Regionality
Not all features are available in
all regions – different instance
types, services and so on. This is
not documented L
Monitor
Monitor spending via billing
alarms to prevent massive
charges for misconfigured or
forgotten services.
Secure
Expect attacks on your services.
Use encryption and credential
managers. Limit permissions as
much as possible.
Test
Test failure modes that are not
present in on-prem solution:
network issues, resources
disappearing, …
Assess/minimize risks when migrating

13. Backup
Keep backups of everything you
can. In many cases this can be
automated.
Watch out for backup sizes and
pricing for that.
Skills
Using cloud you trade “sysadmin”
and similar skills for “cloud
expert”.
Regionality
Not all features are available in
all regions – different instance
types, services and so on. This is
not documented L
Monitor
Monitor spending via billing
alarms to prevent massive
charges for misconfigured or
forgotten services.
Secure
Expect attacks on your services.
Use encryption and credential
managers. Limit permissions as
much as possible.
Test
Test failure modes that are not
present in on-prem solution:
network issues, resources
disappearing, …
Assess/minimize risks when moving

14. Backup
Keep backups of everything you
can. In many cases this can be
automated.
Watch out for backup sizes and
pricing for that.
Skills
Using cloud you trade “sysadmin”
and similar skills for “cloud
expert”.
Regionality
Not all features are available in
all regions – different instance
types, services and so on. This is
not documented L
Monitor
Monitor spending via billing
alarms to prevent massive
charges for misconfigured or
forgotten services.
Secure
Expect attacks on your services.
Use encryption and credential
managers. Limit permissions as
much as possible.
Test
Test failure modes that are not
present in on-prem solution:
network issues, resources
disappearing, …
Assess/minimize risks when moving

15. Backup
Keep backups of everything you
can. In many cases this can be
automated.
Watch out for backup sizes and
pricing for that.
Skills
Using cloud you trade “sysadmin”
and similar skills for “cloud
expert”.
Regionality
Not all features are available in
all regions – different instance
types, services and so on. This is
not documented L
Monitor
Monitor spending via billing
alarms to prevent massive
charges for misconfigured or
forgotten services.
Secure
Expect attacks on your services.
Use encryption and credential
managers. Limit permissions as
much as possible.
Test
Test failure modes that are not
present in on-prem solution:
network issues, resources
disappearing, …
Assess/minimize risks when moving

16. Backup
Keep backups of everything you
can. In many cases this can be
automated.
Watch out for backup sizes and
pricing for that.
Skills
Using cloud you trade “sysadmin”
and similar skills for “cloud
expert”.
Regionality
Not all features are available in
all regions – different instance
types, services and so on. This is
not documented L
Monitor
Monitor spending via billing
alarms to prevent massive
charges for misconfigured or
forgotten services.
Secure
Expect attacks on your services.
Use encryption and credential
managers. Limit permissions as
much as possible.
Test
Test failure modes that are not
present in on-prem solution:
network issues, resources
disappearing, …
Assess/minimize risks when moving

17. Backup
Keep backups of everything you
can. In many cases this can be
automated.
Watch out for backup sizes and
pricing for that.
Skills
Using cloud you trade “sysadmin”
and similar skills for “cloud
expert”.
Regionality
Not all features are available in
all regions – different instance
types, services and so on. This is
not documented L
Monitor
Monitor spending via billing
alarms to prevent massive
charges for misconfigured or
forgotten services.
Secure
Expect attacks on your services.
Use encryption and credential
managers. Limit permissions as
much as possible.
Test
Test failure modes that are not
present in on-prem solution:
network issues, resources
disappearing, …
Assess/minimize risks when moving

18. Monitoring solution costs
CRM

19. Help!

20. Solutions
delivery &
customer
enablement
team
Mature data
management
platform

21. Data Management Platform
Bespoke systems
Vendor no longer available or
not cooperating
Complex scenarios
Many-to-one or many-to-
many scenarios
Lots of customizations over
long periods of time
Messy data
Needing cleaning up,
repurposing, reconstructing
or enrichment
Tight deadlines
When traditional approach
can’t deliver on time

22. Re-use components and blocks of logic,
including code, to boost productivity.
KISS. Break complex jobs into simpler
manageable parts (with ability to drill
down and up) to improve quality,
teamwork and transparency.
Give less technical colleagues more
power by building and neatly packaging
components for them to use and adapt.
Build your own templates and frameworks that
speed up delivery of new projects by allowing
non-developers to customize and reuse a proven
implementation.
Increase Developer Productivity

23. There is no “I can’t” with CloverDX.
Combining capabilities of coding with the
readability of a visual design, CloverDX lets
developers solve hard problems in code while
empowering less technical colleagues.
While CloverDX is built so that
everything can sit on a single
platform, it is flexible to fill in gaps
in an existing technology stack.
Thanks to its open architecture,
almost every part of CloverDX can
be customized, versioned, parameterized.
If 90% of the work is easy and 10% are
the exceptions, error and outliers, then
CloverDX is built to help you deal with
those 10 percent.
Solve 100% of a problem, not just the easy 90%