Software application types and associated hosting infrastructure come in a plethora of combinations. In this guide, we will focus on the scope of the most common types of application hosting. That scope consists of traditional on-premise hosting and public and private cloud IaaS techniques. Ardoq can easily be extended to support the modeling of PaaS and cloud-native application hosting scenarios.

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Application Hosting focuses on capturing and maintaining the relationship between applications and the infrastructure that runs them. By keeping these dependencies between applications and infrastructure transparent, we can improve the management of enterprise complexity and allow for more effective change planning.

Application Hosting adds insights into the technology landscape by providing a clear view of which IT devices each application in your portfolio runs on. When these dependencies are transparent, you enable your operational governance to prioritize better upgrades and reduce risk to potential critical systems. Better upgrades and reduced risk results in:

Recently there has been a trend where organizations recognize hosting infrastructure as a commodity capability. As a result, many organizations move applications and potentially other technology services to the cloud. Mapping these applications to infrastructure dependencies prepares application modernization and where the cloud can be utilized—for example, shedding light on the cost management of cloud services.

Shifting infrastructure from an asset to service moves IT spending from a capital expenditure (CAPEX) to an operational expenditure (OPEX). Additionally, it provides a more stable cost base to drive further modernization.

Application Hosting connects your server lifecycle data to applications used across your organization. The connections allow you to understand the impact of change, which speeds up the implementation of your change initiatives and enables you to run initiatives consecutively.

1. Complete the ITLM and ALM guides

As a first step, you will need to document your IT infrastructure and applications in Ardoq. To do so, please follow the steps in the IT Lifecycle Management (ITLM) and Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) guides.

2. Import your cloud data

Next, if your organization leverages cloud services, it’s important to document your IaaS cloud data in Ardoq to have a complete picture of your portfolio and its dependencies. There are several ways to bring your data into Ardoq. We recommend using:

You can use Surveys and Broadcasts to canvass key stakeholders across your entire organization and gain additional metadata information and app to server references. Surveys provides a fast and easy way to gather any kind of data, while Broadcasts enables you to reach the right people at the right time by using powerful event-driven automation.

3. Understand the requirements of Application Hosting

Now is a good time to familiarize yourself with the core concepts of Application Hosting, such as:

Go to the Application Hosting Metamodel Whitepaper for an in-depth explanation of the different component types, fields, and reference types that make up the metamodel for Application Hosting.

4. Map your applications and infrastructure together

Now it’s time to use references to map applications to on-premise servers and cloud services. There are three different ways in which you can create references in Ardoq:

Check the What Are References? KB article for a step-by-step guide on how to create references.

5. Visualize and optimize your portfolio

Now that you have mapped the application to infrastructure dependencies, we see how those dependencies impact the business. With the Dependency Map, we can use our business capability model to view the applications and infrastructure that enable them. We can even see locations, which help identify potential risk areas by highlighting business-critical capabilities that may not have proper business continuity (server hosting is all in one location).

Another critical data point is application and infrastructure lifecycles data. We can view that data with several lenses.

To gain a contextual understanding of the technology, you can focus on the asset in question and look at more relationship-oriented views like the Block Diagram, Component Matrix, or Dependency Map. That will give you a greater understanding of the ecosystem's impact.

6. Set reminders

To effectively manage your IT infrastructure, applications, and cloud services, all key stakeholders should be notified in advance before anyone is removed. Use Broadcasts to create a milestone alert that will inform stakeholders when a key date (e.g., end of support date) is approaching and what happens after that.

A list of changes made to the article are listed below:

February 24th, 2022