After you have defined your business goals, the next step is to review your existing architecture and analyze your migration requirements. Here is an abbreviated list as an example:
  • Users—Create a list of your users and their access requirements. Are these users accessing the application from within or outside of a firewall? What types of authentication and authorization do you need?
  • Components—Inventory your existing components. For example, you may have desktop GUIs that need to be replaced by web/browser-based UIs, database servers that you need to migrate, etc.
  • Processes—Examine your current processes and determine which of them need to be changed or migrated. For example, do you have batch processes or scheduled jobs that need to be modified or retained?

Identify opportunities for reuse

There are many parts of your application architecture that you will want to retain. For example, your core business logic, your data models, etc. As you review your application architecture, determine what components and parts you can keep, while you discard or update others.