DIGITAL INNOVATION PLATFORM

A holistic Approach

Enabling Modernization at Scale

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App Modernization tools for speed and maximum ROI


After 20+ years in business and 1,000's of projects delivered, InCycle's team of industry experts has developed valuable experience, frameworks, and technology to maximize return on investment and accelerate digital transformation, at scale. These methodologies and capabilities are foundational to service engagements and core to predictable customer success. InCycle’s Digital Innovation Accelerator (DIA) is a collection of our intellectual property (IP) investments designed specifically to support Azure cloud migration and modernization.


Digital transformation is a necessary strategic journey, but not without its challenges. In fact, most organizations do not have a contextualized and strategic approach to systematically move workloads and apps to Azure. Instead, stakeholders struggle and say things like:

  • "We don’t know where to begin" - lack of visibility into workload inventory, scale, and priority.
  • "Cloud is new, complex and dynamic" - feeling intimated, teams may not have the requisite skills (e.g., architecture, security...)
  • "Our team is already overwhelmed" - already behind and spread thin between too many projects.
  • "Everything is a one off" - from testing to security to governance, every team reinvents the wheel!
  • "Project is too slow" - no end in sight; deadlines slip, teams get frustrated and lose interest.

To address these challenges, we "innovated" beyond common modernization approaches. To start, we asked ourselves, our partners, and our customers, "what if you could..." 

App Modernization Challenges & Solutions
Industry response was overwhelming. As a result, we melded our deep experience and proprietary IP to create a purpose-built solution to help organizations successfully realize their most ambitious digital transformation goals.

 

Most organizations are turning to the cloud to achieve maximum flexibility and efficiency. However, many have significant infrastructure investments and are compelled to maximize their legacy value. Others have regulatory requirements keeping certain assets on-prem and behind their firewall. Regardless of the situation, InCycle's Digital Innovation Accelerator helps mold the modernization strategy best suited for execution.

With a large portfolio, whether organic or acquired, it may not make sense to do a detailed analysis of each workload or app at first. Instead, we recommend customers start with a high-level portfolio analysis to complete an initial categorization triage and inventory. Business (subjective) and technical (objective) context and data ultimately drive prioritization into four distinct quadrants.

  • Probably
  • Definitely
  • Possibly
  • Unlikely

Modernization potential (%) and business value (%) make up the X & Y axis. Bubble size denotes estimated modernization effort (size) and color reflect preliminary platform categories and technologies.App Modernization and Azure Workload Prioritization

Following initial analysis, top modernization candidates become apparent for deeper technical and opportunity assessments. A portfolio analysis quickly and easily enables customers to identify and filter which applications will be easiest and most impactful to migrate to Azure.  Next, we evaluate each individual workload according to several key scoring factors.

 

Today's software portfolios usually support a wide range of technologies and vary greatly between companies and business units. However, every modernization analysis must consider the technical underpinnings. At InCycle, we believe this is best achieved at the individual workload level so that each is fix to the appropriate landing zone. It is for this reason we provide customers with an easy-to-use workload evaluation wizard that is configured to match an organizations exact technology ecosystem.  Azure Technical Context

As referenced in "workload prioritization," technology analysis is key to identify modernization potential and impact. Moreover, the information gathered will automatically identify potential target architectures and the associated financial impact. All along the way.  InCycle's Digital Innovation Accelerator fuels organizations to accelerate decision making and ultimately realize modernization at scale. 

Digital Innovation Accelerator

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Despite the promise of the cloud, stakeholders must create a compelling business case that clearly defines the business value of modernization through increased agility. new opportunities, or risk management. These and other factors must be taken into consideration to provide holistic view of attainable outcomes. 

Equally at the workload level, InCycle's Digital Innovation Accelerator helps organizations define and visualize strategic business factors including, but not limited to: 

  • Revenue and costs
  • Risk and urgency
  • Strategic alignment
For maximum applicability and flexibility, business surveys and response options are contextualized and customized for each customer environment as part of the engagement's expert consulting services.

App Modernization Business Value and Analysis

 

 

Return on investment (ROI) is the key measure of the profit derived from any investment. In the lens of Digital Transformation, ROI is useful in evaluating the current or potential outcome when deciding whether to undertake a new initiative. 

Organizations move to the cloud for a variety of reasons, but in most instances, they can be summed up as ROI. However, many customers struggle with understanding ROI and the underlying business case. The challenge rests in the identification of inputs relative to the strategy (i.e., costs and benefits). While some information is readily available, usually on the cost side, future costs may be unknown.  Our IP isolates key financial indicators and risks into a simple executive dashboard, including:

  1. On-prem cost (current)
  2. Cloud modernization cost (Azure)
  3. Code modernization cost (project)
  4. Platform modernization cost (project)
  5. Business opportunity (benefit)
Identifying business opportunity can be elusive, particularly when evaluating the art of the "possible." For example, it is not uncommon for organizations to monetize data post modernization. However, having comfort in this foresight is difficult to crystallize without transparency. 

Azure App Modernization ROI Breakdown

 

When you modernize at scale (hundreds or thousands of workloads) platform engineering (PE) becomes a strategic initiative. Deemed the next evolution of DevOps, PE introduces and enables users to utilize standardized tools, components, and automated processes. Put simply, PE is a modern approach to accelerate the delivery of applications. 

During app modernization, newly provisioned dev/test environments and the supporting cloud infrastructure enables development team to work with less friction. PE provides an enormous opportunity to improve developer productivity by providing self-service capabilities and automation. Complete with built-in security, governance, CI/CD, and other necessary components., PE eliminates the traditional dependency on operations and speeds engineering velocity.

InCycle empowers organizations to not only conceive but realize enterprise-level platform engineering. Following a consultative engagement, InCycle enables PE by providing standardized and reusable templates that enforce the correct level of abstraction, thereby, establishing “golden paths and paved roads" for development teams.

Learn More or Request Platform Engineering Demo. Platform Engineering on Azure for Dev Teams

Gartner expects that by 2026, 80% of software engineering organizations will establish platform teams as internal providers of reusable services, components and tools for application delivery. Platform engineering will ultimately solve the central problem of cooperation between software developers and cloud operators.

At the corporate level, digital transformation initiatives, such as application portfolio modernization, are large, high profile and complex projects. Given their significance and targeted impact, it is imperative that such initiatives are monitored and accountable. Based on a standard set of customizable KPIs, stakeholders can publish dashboards to match strategic goals.

Azure Modernization Visbility

 

Azure Migration and Modernization Accelerator  for Speed and Maximum ROI.

Digital Innovation Accelerator

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What our clients say ...

"If it wasn't for the InCycle team, we probably wouldn't be around to talk about it. What we have accomplished is so little time --- is amazing."

Happy Customer

CTO

"We had some ideas of how to solve the problem, but nothing as elegant as you presented."

Happy Customer

DevOps

"We really appreciate your team going the extra mile --- we didn't even have to ask for it!"

Happy Customer

Architect

“Working with InCycle enabled us to quickly prototype a test environment in Azure with almost no upfront effort.  InCycle’s expertise has shown that they fundamentally understand the technology, listen to customer’s needs and requirements and then can quickly implement a precise customized solution.”

Craig Steinfort

Test Manager