Legacy Application Migration to Microsoft Azure: A Case Study

Company Overview

A leader in Occupational Health, OMI provides the highest quality occupational health products, services, and continuing education to help your company meet OSHA requirements for your Pulmonary Function, Hearing Conservation, and Respirator Protection Programs.

Challenge

OMI was facing major security risks running legacy web servers that were outdated and no longer receiving updates. They needed to modernize their hardware and operating systems to mitigate vulnerabilities and do so, with minimal downtime and disruption for their customers.

Major Obstacles:

• Highly vulnerable web sessions using SSL on legacy Microsoft Windows Servers, due to deprecated TLS 1.0 & 1.1, which no longer receive security patches or assisted technical support.
• On-premise backups were cumbersome and time-consuming with restoration from backup taking hours to complete.
• MySQL databases hadn’t been updated or patched in years.
• Legacy server software, Adobe ColdFusion, was outdated and required nightly reboots.

OMI selected Tevpro in their legacy modernization efforts to move outdated applications onto current Windows Server releases and migrate them into the Microsoft Azure Cloud. Upon moving OMI to the cloud, Tevpro wanted to provide unprecedented speed, the volume of data, security, and ultimately, business value through cost and time savings.

Approach

Our first goal was to ensure OMI’s clinical evaluations being performed were secure from the moment the web browser sessions began to storing the results securely in the database.

To secure the web sessions, our team deployed a reverse proxy server in front of OMI’s legacy servers while we remedied the issues among the legacy infrastructure and software.

The reverse proxy allowed us to put another secure layer in front of the application servers. We set up automated SSL renewals using Let’s Encrypt, so OMI would never need to worry about purchasing or managing future SSL renewals.

To fix the legacy infrastructure issues, we utilized the Lift and Shift approach to migrate legacy servers from a co-location facility in Houston to Microsoft’s Azure Cloud. Overall, this allowed us to remedy the hardware issues and improve the overall stability and security of the servers.

As for the databases, we decided to migrate all databases to Azure Database for MySQL. This lowered the overall maintenance cost while providing a more scalable database with proven backup and restoration protocols.

When it came to the software stack, we evaluated proprietary and open-source options for moving the Adobe ColdFusion applications to the cloud. High-traffic systems can get expensive when running ColdFusion in the cloud so we wanted to mitigate that cost. After some initial research and testing, we found that the open-source CFML server Lucee suited our needs.

Results

We knew that moving to the cloud would be a big win for OMI in terms of cost savings and reduced maintenance time, but even we were shocked by some of the findings after successfully migrating to Microsoft Azure Cloud.

Benefits of migrating to Microsoft Azure Cloud:

• We are saving our client money by running the applications on smaller server instances.
• By moving the Adobe ColdFusion applications to the cloud, using the open-source CFML server Lucee, it runs much faster, handles greater volumes of data, and uses less memory.
• No more scheduled tasks for server reboots or service restarts are required, which means zero downtime.
• Automated database and server backups are more reliable and restoring from a backup is a breeze.
• Patching infrastructure is much faster in the cloud.
• The client is able to automate disaster recovery.
• SSL certificate renewals are now free and completely automated, saving both time and money.
• We reduced infrastructure costs by running on Azure Cloud versus maintaining “on-premise” servers at a co-location space.

Conclusion

Modernizing your legacy applications can be easier and take less time than you think. At Tevpro, we don’t believe in a “one-size-fits-all” approach when it comes to the tools and technology we recommend for our clients. Not every business case requires a move to the cloud and in some instances, we can breathe new life into your current legacy system or automate and unify financial and business processes.

We’d love to sit down to talk through and fully understand your business challenges. We can help you evaluate your options, including the pros and cons, and we’re completely transparent about any limitations.

If you’re considering modernizing your legacy applications, contact us. We’d love to be a part of your journey.