Application Analysis Framework Overview

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There has been a great deal of interest on how to conduct an application analysis, with the goals of considering either a migration or enabling an application coexistence model. Generally, we can think of four main phases of an application analysis.

 

Phase I - Discovery

  • Discover Unused Applications - identify those applications which are no longer in use
  • Identify Applications to be Archived - Select applications that are not candidates for migration or coexistence for various business reasons
  • Discover Domino Template Based Applications– there are data migration tools available for the applications based upon Standard Domino templates
  • Administration Templates
  • Discover Customer Template Based Applications - these represent templates that the customer has developed or purchased, and used within their organization for many applications – there could be hundreds or even thousands of applications that inherited their design from a set of these templates. By understanding and developing a strategy for these templates, one can apply the same approach to the applications based upon the templates, thus greatly reducing the number of “custom” analyses.
  • Discover Mail Databases – these applications are migrated using Exchange Migration Wizard for Lotus Notes and should be handled during the mail migration process.

After Phase I, the number of applications that are candidates for migration and that need additional analysis should be greatly reduced (e.g. 50% or less).

 

Phase II - In Depth Review of remaining applications, with the following goals:

· Understanding the Data Structures: how is data stored in the applications today?

· Understanding the Process Workflow: Investigate those applications which include actions, events and mail enabled processes

· Understanding the Presentation Layer: Research all business requirements for the specialized collaboration services

After an in depth review is conducted, applications can be further categorized

  • Leave in Place - Applications that should be left in place, such as applications that don't fit in the new environment today or whose data will expire (or is no longer needed) in a short period of time, and older applications that require a reworking anyway.
  • Buy versus Build Decision - does the customer already own the functionality in an existing application or is there a 3rd party application that meets the business needs filled by the application?
  • Logical Business and Functionality Grouping -are there applications today that do the same things within the organization and are there applications that could be combined?

Phase III – Target Solution Mapping

  • Existing Customer Solutions: Identify if an existing platform available to support the solution (i.e. SAP, Siebel).
  • Buy Off-the-Shelf Products: Investigate available "out of the box" solutions
  • Build New Solution: Choose best platform to rebuild improved version of the solution
  • Leave In Place on Domino: Web enable or build new front-end application with .NET

After Phase II and III, an even smaller percentage of the total applications will be migration candidates.

 

Phase IV – Transition to New Solution

  • Enable New Solution: Finalize and deploy new target solution
  • Train IT, Developers and End Users: Provide necessary training to the organization
  • Migrate Necessary Data: Move all, or subset, of Notes data
  • End of Life-Cycle: Disable access and archive old application

 

On a future post, I will go into more details of each phase and the resources that can be used in them.

 

- Scott

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  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
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