Moving house and moving applications are not the same. Or are they?

As a Solution Architect I see my job as many things, from supporting customers in adopting Red Hat technology, educating organisations about using open source technologies and the benefits it brings, to thinking of ways to solve business challenges using technology and culture change. However, these are all generally in the space of “green field” app development. But what about all the systems keeping the business going today?

The challenges businesses face in dealing with these “legacy” systems are complex, multi-faceted, involve many teams, and often businesses face knowledge gaps in how everything works together.

In the public sector, where I work, this problem of legacy systems is arguably larger and more challenging, with the need for organisations to share information, outlined by things like Digital Service Standard. But, it’s worked that way for years, so why change it?

Because the old way of doing things may limit your ability to adapt. How do you expect your business to be agile, to adapt quickly and deliver quicker if you have old systems that are holding you back?

In the same way, if you were moving house, you wouldn’t do it without packing up things you need, organising it, throwing old things away and replacing where you need to.

If you’ve lived somewhere for 20 years, you’re bound to have accumulated a lot of stuff, some of which you hardly use, some of which you know needs to be replaced, and other stuff which you frankly don’t even know how you got or who uses it.

Now it’s time to sort it out because you do not want to take all of that to your shiny new house, just like you don’t want to take that old technology stack that’s unsupported and insecure to your new platform. You need to have a plan, and have the right tools and the right people in the right teams - you wouldn’t get your kids to pack up your fine china when moving house, bad things are bound to happen, so why get just anyone to look at a large scale app migration?

You would discuss the need to move house with your family, explore what needs you have, and understand what you want to bring with you (and what you can leave behind), right? Likewise you should do something like this when moving applications to a new platform.

Moving companies have their own processes to get you from your old house to your shiny new home. The same needs to be done for moving from legacy systems to your new platform, by using a standard, proven, modular, repeatable and pragmatic methodology: discover, design, deploy.