Application consolidation usually takes two methods. The first type of Consolidation is the merging of two instances of the same system into a single sample. For example, an organisation may have one instance of SAP running in Australia and another instance running in Europe. The consolidation effort would combine these two instances of SAP into a single system to serve users in both locations.
The second type of Consolidation is to merge two different systems with similar functionality into a single system. For example, an organisation may be running Oracle's E-Business Suite in Australia and SAP in Europe. The consolidation effort, in this case, would move all the users to a single application--most likely SAP or Oracle. The second type of Consolidation is generally more difficult than the first because it requires a much greater amount of planning, requirements mapping, business process reengineering, and user training.
Although most application consolidation projects involve merging only two or three systems into a single instance, the scale of some projects can be much greater.
The difficulties of application consolidation should not be underestimated. The benefits should be appreciated as well, including:
Application consolidation can reduce the number of software vendors and contracts, which cuts licensing costs and simplifies the application portfolio.
IT staffing requirements are streamlined, as fewer systems need to be supported, and there is less need to recruit technicians with hard-to-find legacy skills.
Processing requirements are reduced because the consolidated systems are likely to run on fewer servers, saving hardware, operating systems, and database licensing fees.
The overall IT environment is simplified because there are fewer interfaces to be maintained between systems.
The quality of information improves as data is no longer scattered across multiple databases and applications, each of which may define key information in a different way.
Workforce productivity improves as there is less need for users to learn and work in as many different applications as they did before consolidation.
Drivers for application consolidation The key motivating factors for application consolidation, including
Application silos, which lead to effort duplication and quality issues
Lack of a unified 'one-stop-shop' experience
Impact on user and employee productivity due to varied experiences
Non-standardised technology stack
Lack of common standards across the enterprise, such as service-based integration and HTML standards
Simplification of business processes
Inconsistent user experience – lacking a standard experience with easy navigation
Difficulty in onboarding new applications
To facilitate smoother and more efficient enterprise application integration
Implementation of security standards such as SSO
Ease maintenance efforts and efficient user management
Reduce functionality duplication and enhance reusability through Consolidation
Reduction of operational costs Consolidation happens at many layers, such as back-end consolidation, CMS, services, etc.
Challenges with fragmented web applications Having multiple web applications will typically increase operational costs. A few of the pain points of having fragmented web applications include
· Complex business operating models
· High costs of managing multiple portals
· Inconsistent branding across channels and marketing initiatives
· Competitor pressures
· Saturated sales
· Dissatisfied online customers
· Multiple user IDs and passwords
Achievements by a consolidated portal platform include:
· Cost efficiencies
· Brand consistency
· Risk management
· Improved quality – better user experience
· Accelerated time-to-market
These disjointed applications could have come about as a result of mergers and acquisitions or the lack of a defined digital roadmap, but they will ultimately be a huge drain on the organisation's resources. They will affect both internal users, like employees, as well as external users, such as customers and partners.
A few of these effects include external users. Time-consuming and inflexible, the Same customer will need to have multiple accounts to avail of different services. Partners may have to use multiple systems to complete transactions or may also be involved in physical transactions.
Internal Users Lack of automation and delinked portals decreases efficiency and increases duplication of effort. Multiple web applications result in multiple support teams, thus reducing support efficiency. Data inconsistency across applications may create operational issues.
Web Portal Consolidation
The consolidation of web applications to a common portal platform needs to be taken up in a phased approach and will require careful planning and execution.
Phase-1 Build the consolidated portal as a gateway to all enterprise applications and use link-based integration to expose the functionality through portal layers.
This phase will include building the base portal infrastructure and doing a UI- level integration to expose the existing applications – using portal technologies. In an iterative release, typically, this is the first phase of the release, wherein we could quickly create a landing page acting as a gateway for enterprise applications through link-based integration.
Phase-2 Implement SSO and phase-wise application migration to the new portal platform. Required data and content migration to be done.
Once the initial platform is set up, we can start with the planned migration of existing web applications to the new platform.
Each application migration should be planned independently, and any reusable functionality should be identified to reduce the implementation effort. As a part of this phase, we should also consolidate all the back-end data. This needs database consolidation, CMS consolidation, user repository consolidation, services consolidation, asset consolidation, document consolidation, and any custom data consolidation.
This can be planned in a traditional waterfall model or as an agile model based on application complexities. This phase also needs to have a central SSO solution to be put in place for seamless integration between application layers.
Phase-3 Complete the migration of all applications to the new platform to conclude the consolidation process.
Considerations for application consolidation
Security: During the process of application consolidation, an enterprise-level single sign-on (identity management) solution is inevitable. This solution is required to have centralised user management and
must also provide seamless navigation across applications.
Integration: While designing a new enterprise-consolidated portal, it is always recommended to have a middleware layer (ESB / MQ), which will ensure that a loose coupling between the web application and back-end systems exists. This also provides flexibility to expose generic services, which can be reused across applications and can reduce the security risk by masking the back-end systems. This will also make it easy to onboard new applications in the future.
Content migration: Typically, most web applications are content-heavy and may have content existing in multiple systems. During portal consolidation, it is also recommended to consolidate the content across these systems. This will reduce the operational effort of maintaining multiple content management systems and will reduce the effort required for content creation across varied systems.
UI look and feel: A new look and feel will be needed for the consolidated portal and should be given priority so that a user-friendly and extensible user interface with the ability to provide dynamic UI is made available. The UI should also be lightweight and highly responsive, and it should
satisfy multiple device configurations and resolutions. This is a very important aspect since the majority of users are moving towards mobile-based usage and transactions, and the lack of a responsive UI will affect user adoption.
Data migration: Data is another area that may need to be consolidated. If any data migration is required, it should ideally be planned beforehand, as the application design may vary based on the source from which the data is going to be accessed. Migration can also be a tedious task, so it needs to be well-planned to be carried out in parallel with the portal implementation.
Hardware / Infrastructure: The last consideration, but definitely not the least, is hardware, which may be one of the most time- and resource-consuming parts of the application. The infrastructure needs to be carefully planned well in advance, and any reusable hardware needs to be identified and used as and when needed. If the cloud-based infra is being looked at, then accurate sizing needs to be done, and all aspects of security and connectivity need to be taken care of.
Best practices of application consolidation
PoC-based feasibility evaluation: Evaluate various consolidation approaches through proof-of-concept to understand the feasibility and select the most appropriate option. We could also undertake a pilot consolidation to assess the feasibility of the approach.
Consolidation governance: Define the processes, roles, and responsibilities needed for consolidating various enterprise applications.
Experience improvement: Assess the existing user experience challenges and pain points and identify opportunities to improve the user experience to meet customer expectations. This includes identifying opportunities to create a uniform and consistent user interface, improving information architecture, friendlier navigation models, enabling omnichannel experience, improving accessibility, etc.
Stakeholder communication: The impact and schedule of the application consolidation should be communicated with all the concerned stakeholders.
Best practices during application consolidation
Iterative approach: Always consolidate in phases, as big-bang, single-shot consolidation carries a huge risk of failure.
Infrastructure consolidation: The application consolidation exercise would also provide an opportunity to consolidate all underlying infrastructure components. For instance, when we consolidate enterprise content, we can migrate all the enterprise content into an enterprise CMS platform and discard infrastructure components for other CMS platforms.
Back-end data consolidation: Consider and evaluate related back-end data migration along with application consolidation. Without back-end data Consolidation, we would face data integrity and data duplicity issues.
Security system consolidation: Security systems of the enterprise need to be consolidated through user data migration to single-user-registry platforms, design and implementation of single sign-on (SSO), the definition of enterprise-wide roles, and permissions.
Parallel site maintenance process: If we are planning to maintain both the newly-created consolidated application and the original application, we need to establish processes to synchronise data across both applications.
Best practices after application consolidation
Standard technology stack: It is always recommended to use standard components in the ecosystem post-application consolidation. Usage of open standards: Adopt open standards and industry best practices for the consolidated application. Defining uniform processes, metrics, SLAs, and goals and monitoring:
Establish uniform processes for managing and enhancing the consolidated application. Define SLAs and goals to track key metrics for the consolidated application and constantly monitor the consolidated application based on these metrics.
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