App Broker On-Prem to Cloud Migration

[adamgalbreath]

If a company was to install and configure App Broker for ServiceNow with the on-prem version  today and later want to move to the Cloud version what are the main tasks and concerns/challenges one should expect.    The company would primarily use the solution for end-user application install/license request via the ServiceNow catalog and will App Broker for license check and reclamation campaigns.

[CharlesW]

I'd say that the biggest challenge for a while is going to be feature parity between App Broker cloud, and App Broker on-prem. App Broker cloud is not going to be as feature rich for a while.. With that being said, license reclamation, license checks, etc. are core functionality, so I'd expect those items to be available soon in App Broker cloud. A public API is also missing from App Broker cloud at this time, but I would expect that this will be added soon.. An API would allow us to migrate catalog items without much difficulty.. Ideally, I'd like to see a migration tool to migrate from on-prem to cloud, but I don't know that that is on the current road map.

[jdempsey · Accepted solution]

@CharlesW, the App Broker Cloud API's were just "refreshed" last week, and the team is working on a public-facing Swagger interface for documentation/exploration of the API's.  Within Flexera Services, Osa had already written a version of our bulk import script for importing catalog items into App Broker Cloud, so that will need to be updated with the new API's.

@adamgalbreath, App Broker Cloud currently only supports SCCM as the deployment system, so if your customer uses systems other than SCCM for deployment, they will need to wait for those other deployment systems to be supported in App Broker Cloud (Intune is coming Q1 2021).  Reclamation is not yet available in App Broker Cloud.  That feature is on the roadmap for 2021.  Questions, approvals, and custom workflows are also not yet available in App Broker Cloud, but if your customer is using ServiceNow as the front-end for placing requests, then they should be fine, as all of that is handled within ServiceNow, and then App Broker handles coordination of the license checks and deployments.  To answer your original question, the main task will be migrating catalog items, which can be done with the API's that are available (though you'd have to write/customize scripts to use those API's - no tools provided out-of-the-box yet).  There won't really be a way to migrate in-flight requests or request history, so you're essentially finishing out existing requests on-prem and starting fresh with cloud.  The workflow in ServiceNow will be different between on-prem and cloud, so some rework will be necessary there, but hopefully not substantial.  Part of the revamp of the App Broker Cloud API's was to enable some changes to the ServiceNow workflow to simplify that going forward (though I don't expect those same changes in the on-prem version of the workflow).  The last thing will be onboarding of users into App Broker Cloud, but that part isn't super clear to me yet.