Performance optimization during legacy system migration
Tags: Performance, Technology, Optimization, Software Development, Business

Sometimes even a successful business should revise its approaches to keep up with modern demands and solutions. Some issues appear in management, the others in recruitment, but the most crucial ones always concern technologies you use. Technology systems are critical to success. While updating your capabilities, without the proper system migration, it is impossible to meet the needs of customers, management, and other stakeholders.

How to make your company profitable again? How to avoid bad delivery of the product? And how to improve performance optimization?

Ask UppLabs about legacy product migration

WHY DO YOU NEED A LEGACY MIGRATION?

There are several reasons for migrating from old legacy systems. Of course, when starting this process, you need to prepare for a multi-level project, but by hiring a good migration solutions architect, you can make the process as smooth as possible. Some possible reasons to rebuild legacy software could be:

Outdated software costs too much to maintain.

Outdated software is challenging to update.

Feature inclusions have changed the original vision of the product.

The company’s rates are decreasing as potential clients are looking for more modern solutions.

The original build doesn’t have enough accessibility, resulting in software that alienates the users and exposes the company to litigation.

UX patterns have expanded and affected older software.

Mobile compatibility may not have been included when the original code was written.

The new markets affect current users who are getting tired of a slow application update.

THE PROCESS OF MIGRATION

Data migration is a complex process that often requires a separate project, approach, plan, budget, and team. It is often connected with many time-consuming tasks that may be invisible at the beginning stage of the project. We can highlight the following main steps of the legacy system migration:

1. Discovery and Analytics: identifying the data, format, location, and security measures

2. Creating a detailed plan: determination of time, technical, and financial requirements

3. Backing up all your data in case of any failures

4. Executing your data migration plan:

– database changes;

– code changes;

– connection changes;

5. Testing the system after each phase of your migration

6. Performing check-ups and any maintenance of your data migration plan

CHALLENGES OF DEVELOPING LEGACY SYSTEM MIGRATION

There are several issues that you can face when you start the legacy system migration process. The below list includes some of the most common challenges. Depending on your organization’s goals and industry and the specifics of your legacy system, you may experience some problems:

1. Getting the needed technical expertise quickly

Finding the right team is one of the most critical tasks. The success of the whole project usually depends on the right choice. Among the essential advantages of the technical expertise team are:

The entire teamwork is easier to synchronize;

The workflow within the whole team is more precise and transparent;

Mutual cooperation creates equal responsibilities;

The development capacity can be easily scaled;

It’s a fast way to form a team. All specialists are ready, and processes are in place.

2. Meeting the deadlines of the business roadmap and timeline.

Successful data migration is based on the exact details defined in the migration roadmap. It is a plan describing what to do and when, and what to do in case of mistakes or problems. A well-thought-out and accurate plan require an additional time investment, superior knowledge, and experience. The roadmap determines the method applied to import and export data, rebuild the network, and prepare resources and a detailed timeline to speed up the project’s development and launch.

3. Quick scaling up and scaling down of the development team and resources.

Any business always has to inspect all possible changes and prepare a strategy that can be adopted by allocating and scaling the development team and budget, resources, and time. Here it’s better to prepare best practices and distribute them among all members or groups. The more you work to go through the changes, the more adaptable your business will become.

4. Delivering the solution that is on budget

The migration process can be expensive in terms of both time and money. The software can often cost a lot itself, and transferring it to a new system often brings more payments that can sometimes overlap. Delivering the solution you need and still be on the budget can sometimes be a challenge for stakeholders.

5. Delivering the quality product

Regardless of the business, many aspects need to be considered when migrating data, such as regulatory impact and all business processes. This process has to involve various stakeholders of the company and sponsors, and the project team members. That’s how everyone can understand their role in achieving the result. It is critical for any business.

6. Cost-effectiveness of the project

The following is a checklist of questions to ask for the estimator of the project regarding the cost-effectiveness:

What solutions does the migration include?

Is the target platform database compatible with the source database?

Estimate the size and complexity of the data to determine the amount of time and resources needed.

What efforts do the physical transfer of data require?

Are resource requirements stable?

Is the migration team experienced with the technologies available?

7. Performance

Performing and testing the entire process at once can result in low organizational efficiency and can hold and affect your entire business. Optimizing the performance and testing all the stages can take longer but results in estimating the vital business processes in the meantime. Performance includes many issues itself that’s why we’ll be delving it this process in more detail below.

PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION

Depending on the type of product, performance is based on several indicators, such as:

Number of users who use the product simultaneously

For example, what is the User Experience? What is the product’s response time? Is there a lag? How many requests at the same time? Does the number of requests spike at a given time? Why? Are user sessions getting longer or shorter?

In one of our recent projects, UppLabs had to fix the legacy solution that could not support more than 2000 real-time users, and that was affecting the core business goals. Our team had to change the app’s architecture and gradually migrate it from monolith to microservices. As a result, in two months, UppLabs managed to increase the solution’s performance three times.

Data in the database

The data play a significant role in migration. They become integrated into the business, change over time, causing the interdependencies of datasets, which complicates their transfer to a new environment. It is crucial to research the data, applications, and system components used for their complexity and interdependencies to improve data management and application mobility. Thus, the level of data integration is a critical part of the migration process.

Safety

Data protection is a must; all data must be migrated safely to avoid potential data losses. It’s essential to make sure all data are protected and can be extracted securely. The old and new formats should be compatible. That’s the stage where the team has to take the time to test and review all the data carefully.

Duration

How long does each phase of the migration take? How long does it take to test the whole process and each step? Does the term of each phase match expectations? If no, why, and what actions need to be taken?

Application Performance

This indicator can show exactly if your migration was successful. This is usually measured through:

– error rates (failed requests/total requests),

– speed,

– application availability,

– latency,

– number of time-outs, and

– throughput.

PERFORMANCE INDICATORS FOR FINTECH, HEALTHCARE AND REAL ESTATE DOMAINS

If we divide product types into three primary industries, we can select such key Performance indicators:

Download performance indicators

One thing is exact: if your outdated product does not meet your goals and requirements — then it should be optimized because if the performance decreases, this may affect the whole business.

UPPLABS CASE STUDY

In UppLabs practice, we came across an exciting technical case for which we had to provide a legacy rebuild. This case can prove an example of a successfully improved product which performance has risen three times. We had a project with a concrete goal — optimization of application performance by migration from a monolithic system to the new microservices’ infrastructure. The UppLabs team found a curious approach to fulfill this task.

The team offered several solutions to the client:

Rewrite the application from scratch to microservice architecture and following the best code practices. It required more than one year of the development of a team of 5+ members. Implement one microservice covering a small part of the functionality but the most used one, bringing the most significant performance issues. It required around two months of the development of 2 team members.

The client approved the second solution, and the team started to implement it. Besides monolith, the client’s project had problems with code structure, so it has to be rewritten from the very beginning. Our team decided to put the logic into the microservice, creating a Public Getaway API that can be easy to communicate for both sides — the clients of the existing project and the existing businesses.

The main challenge for us was to find a solution that can be realized in a short period and can solve the client’s business problems. However, microservices architecture can be considered a complicated solution; it appears much more comfortable from potential support and scalability.