I’ll be the first to admit—I am not a light packer. Ask anyone who’s traveled with me, and they’ll tell you I have zero chance of squeezing everything into a carry-on. Checked luggage? Always. Overweight fees? Probably. But at least I’m not dragging around a 20-year-old monolithic application on my way to the cloud.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what a lot of enterprises are still doing. They know they need to modernize, but they keep clinging to their outdated architectures like I cling to the idea that I might need that extra pair of shoes on a three-day trip.
The difference? AWS and independent software vendors (ISVs) like vFunction are working together to lighten the load.
The harsh truth: Some applications won’t yield the expected cloud benefits from lifting and shifting
The architectures of some applications are so outdated or riddled with dependencies that moving them as-is to AWS won’t yield any benefits and in fact may increase cost. That’s where modernization is a necessity.
That’s why AWS has programs like ISV Workload Migration to help enterprises reduce the financial barriers to assess, analyze, and modernize their applications’ architecture so they can migrate successfully to the cloud and achieve scalability, speed, and cost savings. This program is a global initiative by AWS that provides enterprises with funded access to advanced ISV modernization and migration technologies. Recently, vFunction announced its inclusion in this exclusive offering of assessment, migration, and cloud operations tools.
Through these programs and with partners like vFunction, enterprises can:
- Analyze application architectures pre-migration to determine what’s cloud-suitable
- Make targeted architectural changes to enable migration to AWS
- Ensure applications don’t just move to the cloud, but run efficiently on AWS
Because let’s face it: Lift-and-shift is not a modernization strategy. Sure, it gets your apps to the cloud, but many enterprises quickly realize that just shifting the problem to a new environment doesn’t magically solve it.
Post lift-and-shift? vFunction helps you go cloud-native
For those that have already lifted and shifted and are asking, “Now what?” vFunction—a pioneer in architectural observability—helps organizations take the next step: Modernizing, migrating, and governing applications in the cloud to achieve a true cloud-native architecture.
vFunction helps companies:
- Refactor applications to use modern AWS services like Lambda, Fargate, and EKS
- Break apart monoliths to improve scalability and agility
- Ensure apps can actually take advantage of AWS’s elasticity, cost optimization, and performance
So whether your applications can’t move to the cloud yet—or they did move but still feel like they’re stuck in the past—vFunction + AWS programs provide a clear path forward.
Building an app mod factory: Small, smart, iterative changes
Modernization doesn’t have to be a big-bang, all-or-nothing approach. In fact, it shouldn’t be. Big-bang modernization projects are slow, risky, and expensive. Instead, we help enterprises build an application modernization factory—an iterative, low-risk approach where we make quick, targeted architectural changes to make apps cloud-ready and cloud-efficient over time.
Here’s how:
Step 1: Architectural observability – Understand what’s actually happening inside your applications (before you break something).
Step 2: Guided refactoring – Use AI-driven automation to detect and fix architectural flaws that block migration or cloud-native adoption.
Step 3: Cloud-suitable transformation – Make the necessary changes to deploy efficiently on AWS, whether it’s moving to containers, serverless, or other modern architectures.
Step 4: Rinse and repeat – Iterate and modernize more apps without the pain of massive, multi-year, waterfall projects.
vFunction helps you quickly understand your existing application and uses AI to identify and organize cloud readiness tasks.
This isn’t about some drawn-out, high-risk transformation. It’s about making practical, impactful changes—quickly and continuously—to ensure applications can run effectively in AWS.
What this means for enterprises
It means no more excuses. AWS has invested in the tools, partners, and frameworks to make modernization and migration achievable. ISVs like vFunction are automating the hardest parts, to transform applications magnitudes faster. Enterprises now have a clear path to cloud success without endless delays, high risks, or wasted spend.
With AWS ISV funded tools, AWS is ensuring every customer moves to the cloud the right way, without dragging their tech debt along for the ride.
Take advantage of AWS funding programs today
So if you’re an enterprise still clutching your legacy apps like I clutch my overpacked suitcase, now’s the time to take advantage of the expertise, tools, and programs available to finally modernize.
And if you’re an AWS rep or SI partner trying to get your customers unstuck—let’s chat. We’re ready to make cloud adoption as painless as possible.
