Page 16 - FCW, August 2021

Maximizing the Benefits of Multi-Cloud
Rethinking legacy app migration and
David Wray
Public-Sector CTO, Micro Focus Government Solutions
Kevin Hansen
CTO, Alliances and Partners, Micro Focus Government Solutions
cycle. If not implemented well, however,
they can increase security risks, especially when each program or project builds its
own software factory. Instead of creating more software factories, agencies should move toward centralizing software build environments and rationalizing duplicative processes that can be used for both legacy and modern application development teams regardless of their development methodology.
They should strive to standardize
all tooling for agile/DevSecOps, create enterprise services that support development teams, and establish policies that monitor for insider threat and eliminate risks during software development.
Agencies don’t need to start from scratch. They can adopt a prescriptive IT digital modernization framework that is based
on open standards, such as the IT Value Chain from the Open Group. This reference architecture can be used for software factory tool selection to ensure interoperability as well as standardize how value and risks are measured for all IT management.
Today, most agencies struggle to make vendors’ products work smoothly together. By contrast, in industries such as telecommunications and finance, standards have helped shift the burden of interoperability from consumers to vendors.
Furthermore, mission-critical legacy systems are large, monolithic applications with complex dependencies that must be assessed in a pragmatic way. This process can be aided by well-proven legacy application
software factories
A deeper understanding of legacy apps and custom software leads to success and predictable results
STANDARD APPROACHES, ENTERPRISE DevSecOps services and value measurements
have proven to significantly reduce costs and security risks and improve the speed
of innovation with digital transformation. Unfortunately, most government agencies struggle with adoption of these approaches, especially for older/legacy application architecture.
Very few government organizations have established common policies, standards and enterprise services for development teams that can support both legacy and modern application migration to the cloud. Despite the plethora of success stories with individual program/ project-based DevOps teams, enterprise adoption, training, policies and standards
remain a challenge. Further, many legacy application development teams are siloed within the organization and have little access to training or modern tools and approaches for application modernization.
When it comes to modernizing legacy IT for a multi-cloud environment,
many agencies jump in without first performing a comprehensive analysis. False assumptions during the assessment of alternative approaches and poor knowledge of existing legacy applications can lead to expensive failures.
Reducing risk with enterprise services for software development Many government agencies have started to build software factories to reduce security risks and greatly improve the innovation
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