COTSsoftware examples

Business have various COTS (Commercial off the shelf) business applications. Some organisations have IT priciciple to buy before build. Therefore it is no wonder that COTS applications are something can not be avoided in a large enterprise.

COTSin software Engineering

It is important start the design by following Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) Azure Landing Zone. As depicted, COTS application must have a dedicated application subscription. Existing platform subscriptions will provide underpinning infrastructure services such as AD and connectivity back to on-premises branch or data centers.

In terms of Azure Load Balancer, Application layer Azure LB or Network layer Azure LB can be used. This could be used to replicate similar load balancing capabilities offered by existing F5 or NetScaler. For URL based load balancing requires Azure Application Load Balancer. Furthermore if WAF (Web Application Firewall) required for security, Then Azure Application Load Balancer is required. If it is just TCP/IP ports layer load balancing internal network load balancer can be used if application not supposed to get exposed to internet while external load balancer can be used for public internet facing applications.

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Cotsdefinition bed

As depicted above, depending on CPU and Memory requirement ratio; compute or memory optimized Azure VM must be chocen. Most of COTS on-premise not designed for spot instance where Azure VM with COTS application can spin up when there is low lost Azure VMs in spot market. Therefore, it is highly likely that reserved Azure VM instance would be most likely be the choice. Furthermore some COTS application tied to MAC address thus it is important to understand that virtual NIC MAC address would change if a NIC dropped. Thus would required replication MAC address at on-premise in Azure VM.

In terms, of selecting a OS it depends on organisational capabilities. If there are more engineers with strong Microsoft WinTel then OS could be Microsoft Windows if application does support to run over Microsoft Windows.

COTSmeaning

Lastly. proper Tags or leverage Azure Managed group as per Azure Landing Zone to improve Azure cloud governance which will helps organisation to improve security and reduce costs in Azure cloud. In a nutshell, Azure VMs required for COTS applications migration which is the centerpiece for COTS application hosting while re-architecting is required to leverage Azure cloud native services to replace on-premises service securely and cost effectively.

In regards to re-architecting a system would requires changing the architecture of the system by replacing with Azure native cloud service. For example if there is a on-premise file system used by the application this could be either replaced by Azure Files, Blobs or even with Microsoft 365 Sharepoint. When replacing with cloud native service there is a need for re-architecting since refactoring is unlikely with a COTS applications. Furthermore if Azure SQL database service being used instead of running DB servers on Azure VM then re-architecting may involved in connecting and securing Azure SQL database service could native service using private virtual networking and identity service. It could also means that leveraging Azure SQL defender kind of cloud native service to provide extra layer of defence.

Whether application require separate dev/test/UAT environment depends on few considerations. Strong change or release management required through testing. Thus organisation would require testing environment to test changes before pushing it to production environment. Furthermore, there is further influence by risk appetite, security policies and culture of organisation or team.