A Tale of Two Migrations

Within an enterprise, there are services (systems really) that are widely popular, offer just what you need, and are easy to use. There are also systems, which for years the organization tries to decommission but they have so many applications depending on them, so many strings attached, it seems impossible. Often, it's the same system, at different points in time.

Recently while exploring a legacy application in order to design its Cloud-native replacement, we identified a connection to such a system. We will refer to this system as the SAK (aka Swiss Army Knife). We wanted to do our part and remove one more string. The SAK’s service we consume acts in essence as a proxy for a database. After investigation, we found out that our application is the only one using the specific data (and thus the service). For the data, imagine a contact list (it's not really a contact list), which facilitates the main business offering of the application. I know I am vague, but I have to be. The data in question make the main functionality easier but their lack does not make it impossible. You could still make calls without your contact list, but it would be a pain. Some clients use the application daily and some might not use it for months. 

Devs Will Just Dev! The Cloud Foundry Promise

“Every company is a technology company” said Peter Sondergaard, Gartner's former executive vice president of research, and evidence of this is all around us. But it was not so easy becoming a technology company, as the entry barriers were high. Besides developing their business propositions, companies had to develop, maintain and operate the platform on top of which their businesses (i.e. applications) run. 

The rise of DevOps culture, automated pipelines, container technologies, and microservices, all contributed to an improved situation. And all these are still evolving and getting increasingly popular. But still, businesses have to deal with things outside the development of their specific business propositions. There is still an operational load to carry, and the load seems to be moved now to the hands of developers. Cloud Foundry helps to eliminate this operational load and the need for building platforms and utility components that have no relation to your business propositions. Cloud Foundry makes it possible to develop only what contributes to your bottom line while it takes care of the rest. It allows developers to just develop!