Role of APM in Readiness Check and Migration Planning

What is Readiness Check?

Readiness Check is the evaluative process an institution goes through before a big business change. A Readiness Check can be conducted before Cloud Migration (the most popular one), or changing the business types in order to understand if the current application inventory fits the desired shape of the business after the change.

There is a general tendency toward the Cloud and many companies decide to migrate into the Cloud today. This is because Cloud infrastructure has many benefits, as well as being labelled as the technology of the future. Cloud Migration is the process of moving a company’s data and software applications into the Cloud structure from on-premises. Cloud can be reached from anywhere provided that there is an internet connection. All in all, Cloud Migration is a digital relocation of physical assets into Cloud infrastructure that is not physically bound.

Before such a change, companies analyse and evaluate their applications to facilitate the process. Assessing the applications also help businesses understand if the Cloud is the correct way to go. There are different actions for applications’ migration during a Cloud Migration. Check these types of Cloud Migration here.

Parallel but not similar, some companies may decide to exit a line of business and direct their efforts to another line of business. In that case, a pre-change Readiness Check is also very fruitful. The companies evaluate their IT inventory and decide which applications to retain or retire. This is done to optimise the stages of the line of business change and helps businesses get aligned with new business strategies carefully planned for the new business line and field of operation.

What is Application Portfolio Management?

APM, the abbreviation of Application Portfolio Management, is a methodical approach for managing and accounting for all software applications a business currently possess. Application Portfolio Management framework ensures that a business’ software is compiled and listed in a single, centralized point to prevent false information from different sources. This way, decision-makers can have a more profound understanding of the IT infrastructure of the company.

Application Portfolio Management (APM) helps the personnel see the real value of an application by providing insightful data on the performance and the technical clarity of the software. APM gathers info about all the software as they are stored and monitored altogether in a digitalized environment.

Thus, a company can evaluate their IT landscape by making it more visible. All the applications and their roles, business benefits, risks are reported. See the metrics Application Portfolio Management employ here. All in all, APM facilitates and optimizes the time and effort spent for analysing applications. For example, a Readiness Check deals with which applications are ready for Cloud Migration. To conduct an efficient Readiness Check, a company should deeply be knowledgeable about its IT inventory.

How Does Application Portfolio Management Help Readiness Check?

Before a Readiness Check takes place, businesses should compile their applications and evaluate them all. A comprehensive process would facilitate making critical business decisions during this migration period. In order to make efficient business decisions before a migration, getting insight into the IT landscape is a very useful action. Application Portfolio Management provides companies with such insight. The benefits of employing Application Portfolio Management would help Cloud Migration processes could be counted as follows.

1. Simpler IT landscape: A complex architecture when it comes to IT management is a no-go. So, simplifying the IT landscape will not only facilitate Cloud Migration processes but also makes it easier to conduct an Application Strategy Alignment. Application Portfolio Management provides you with such simplification.
2. Visibility and traceability: Coming along with a simple IT landscape, monitoring and evaluating software applications well before Cloud Migration also helps the business prosper. Getting insight into software applications that realize the business processes, the decision-makers would have trustworthy datasets regarding the efficiency of the applications in the portfolio.
3. Budget optimization: Deciding which applications are indispensable means that allocating the resources elsewhere is possible. This way, companies should further optimize their departments’ efficiency by relocating personnel or making financial investments to wherever it is more fruitful to do so. Application Portfolio Management creates analytical datasets that could be used in such optimization decisions.

To read about what Application Portfolio Management brings about to business, take a look at this article in which Key Metrics of Application Portfolio Management are referred.