Cloud technology has come of age, and organizations across every industry are rapidly migrating their key applications to these flexible environments. Like their enterprise counterparts, public sector agencies are excited about the potential of cloud services. But many are also expressing anxiety because their technology teams lack insight and visibility, they need to assure a positive application experience. They’re asking questions like:
“We understand why it’s important to migrate to the cloud, but what does that mean from an operations perspective?”
“If I start moving the majority of my applications to the cloud, how can my team support it?”
“How will we really know if our cloud migration is delivering the outcomes we want?”
To calm concerns like these, you need to gain intelligence about your application environments, not only during the cloud migration but before, during and after. And intelligence isn’t something that just appears. To acquire it, you’ll need full visibility into the performance of your complex, distributed applications, in real-time.
Cisco AppDynamics delivers visibility, every step of the way. It enables you to manage application performance across multi-cloud environments, and closely monitor the user experience. And it allows your agency to unlock the operational benefits of a multi-cloud strategy while ensuring your users aren’t impacted by the move.
Know where you’re coming from, to plan where you’re going
Migrating your agency’s key applications to the cloud isn’t a simple drag-and-drop process. Before you can move forward with planning, you need to understand your current application landscape. Ask yourself:
- Do you have an understanding of how your applications are architected today?
- Do you have a complete view of the infrastructure supporting those applications?
- Do you have visibility into application dependencies, including external applications like payment processing systems?
Gaining these insights isn’t always easy. You’ll likely have multiple stakeholders within an application, from applications teams to infrastructure, security and database teams — who are often siloed and focused on their own specific projects.
With application mapping and real-time visibility, Cisco AppDynamics can help you understand the big picture around application dependencies and other architecture concerns. It gives you the intelligence needed to make smarter migration decisions, like which applications to move, which pieces to leave untouched and which components should best be moved in batches.
Migrate with eyes open
Cisco AppDynamics provides the insights you need upfront, as you plan and prepare for your cloud migration. But it really shines when you actually start the process of migrating your applications.
Prior to starting the migration, Cisco AppDynamics will have instrumented your applications to develop a baseline of their current performance. As you start moving all the various parts of your application, you’ll have visibility into whether performance is changing — and potentially degrading the experience for citizens and other users.
Application flow maps ensure you’ll always understand how applications are architected, and all their dependencies. As your migration gains momentum, you’ll continue to have oversight and intelligence throughout the process of migrating each individual application — and eventually all your applications.
Support and optimize your apps
Cisco AppDynamics gives you the intelligence you need to make smarter decisions during your cloud migration. But once your applications are in place, you’ll need to support and optimize them.
If an issue arises, the source could be hiding anywhere. It could be the cloud provider’s fault or an issue with the Internet or network infrastructure. There might be a problem with the application itself, or an associated database. Tracking down the issue and performing root cause analysis could take hours or days. Meanwhile, citizens will be missing access to important information, web portal services, payment systems and other critical services.
Fortunately, prior to migration, you will have instrumented your applications for full visibility. With this 360-degree view of each application, and how the infrastructure and cloud environments are supporting it, you’ll understand the root cause faster — and know who can best address it. Instead of spending time chasing down every lead, a quick call to your cloud provider could be the fastest way to get the issue fixed.
Tracking your success and justifying your investment
No matter what kind of cloud initiative you’re leading, it will be a major investment — one that should deliver a better experience for your citizens and staff. But now that those applications are in a new environment that we expect to be better, more flexible and more agile, what does their actual performance look like?
Cisco AppDynamics gives you the ability to measure your success by comparing applications in your new environment to their previous baseline performance. We can provide a snapshot of your applications prior to migration, and a snapshot of the application running in the cloud. If your initiative has reduced the time required for all the different calls within an application, and all its transactions, you can confidently report back to your CIO that your cloud app migration was a good investment.
If it turns out certain aspects of your application performance have decreased, Cisco AppDynamics provides the insights you need to quickly track down the root cause, and work with the right team or cloud provider to address the issue. And it provides the intelligence you need to truly hold your cloud providers accountable.
Like any major strategic initiative, cloud migration requires careful planning and close attention to complex details. Cisco AppDynamics can help remove anxiety and uncertainty from the process by providing the visibility and intelligence you need most. In doing so, you can migrate your mission-critical applications to the environment you choose, with confidence.
Learn more about how Cisco AppDynamics can help you ensure a smoother path to cloud by visiting our cloud migration page, downloading the Ultimate guide to hybrid cloud monitoring or scheduling time with an AppDynamics cloud specialist.
Seth Price is a regional SLED director at Cisco AppDynamics with a strong background in technology leadership from previous work at public sector entities, including the State of Michigan and Durham County, North Carolina. Focused on helping public sector leaders with digital transformations, Seth manages a team of Cisco AppDynamics experts responsible for helping state and local governments and higher education organizations create, maintain and secure meaningful digital experiences in the eastern United States.
