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Many businesses still rely on monolithic architecture for their application portfolio. Modernizing legacy software using advanced tools and technology is a great way to maintain organizational agility.
It also helps boost business efficiency, reduce production costs, and improve the customer experience.
However, 93% of IT leaders face challenges when modernizing their applications. Application modernization is only worthwhile if you know what to do and how to avoid the pitfalls.
This blog is a short guide to application modernization. It covers its benefits, challenges, and best practices.
What is Application Modernization?
The main focus of application modernization is to update an organization's current apps in a cloud-first model. This process is sometimes called legacy modernization.
If an organization has on-premises applications, it may be necessary to migrate them to a hybrid, public, or private cloud.
Older applications are updated using newer computing approaches, such as frameworks, languages, and architectures.
Modernizing Legacy applications allows enterprises to enhance an existing system's efficiency, security, and structural integrity rather than replace it.
When Should You Consider Modernizing Your Application?
In the wake of the pandemic, enterprises increasingly focus on modernizing their applications to drive innovation and integrate innovative processes.
They need to have the infrastructure in place to achieve modernization goals.
Modernizing apps with a robust strategy allows companies to reach the market quicker by reducing costs, improving their access to data, and updating operational processes.
Profits are multiplied, and the customer experience is improved. Why should you start your app transformation?
You Wish To Enhance The App Functionality
The main focus of application modernization is to update an organization's current apps in a cloud-first model. This process is sometimes called legacy modernization.
If an organization has on-premises applications, it may be necessary to migrate them to a hybrid, public, or private cloud.
You must constantly update your app to reflect their tastes to stay competitive and satisfy users' needs. You must update your app regularly to add new features and improve security.
New features are not always possible on outdated systems or technologies. There is no need for third-party integrations when adding new features or functionalities.
You Are Looking To Cut Costs
The cost of developing and maintaining an app on premises is usually higher or burdened by debt. You must pay licensing fees and the cost of hiring staff to manage them.
Migrating to new technologies and architectures can initially appear more expensive. You can reduce costs by integrating new technology. You can replace legacy software with feature-rich open-source applications, have frequent commercial support, and do not require license fees.
You Wish To Reduce Human Dependence
Automating multiple tasks can reduce repetition or redundancy. You can also ensure your employees are as productive and efficient as possible by reducing their dependency.
Want To Improve Agility?
It is difficult to deploy new versions of monolithic applications. You can achieve rapid and continuous app delivery by using advanced orchestration platforms and following DevOps practices.
You can also update different parts of your application when you refactor monolithic applications into deployable microservices.
Myths About Application Modernization
Software is now seen as an important corporate asset in the fight against fierce competition. Modernization is not only the responsibility of software-centric companies anymore.
This approach encompasses multiple functions, including HR, core IT, and sales. These myths prevent companies from realizing the need to upgrade their applications and ultimately hinder their growth.
Modernizing Your Operating Model Can Be Costly
As enterprises try to align their business models with customer needs or transform their business models, they need to be more flexible and change their app portfolio.
Unfortunately, many organizations struggle to manage their finances because of the accumulation of technical debt and maintenance costs.
You may think that paying off the excessive technical debt will affect your future earnings, as you are already incurring labor and licensing costs.
What if you focused them on rehosting incrementally instead of maintaining these applications? Or replatforming them with best practices for modernizing applications? Reallocating resources will help you to drive innovation and efficiency.
A Skilled Software Team Is Needed To Modernize Applications
Most businesses believe that software developers with extensive knowledge and experience are required to modernize their applications.
This belief is not completely true. To handle IT backlogs, you can hire a software vendor externally or a remote team of software developers. You can also choose a combination of low-code platforms and services.
Low-code platforms allow you to build and update applications much faster. This allows developers to share functionality with stakeholders in hours or days.
Rapid Application Development can also be integrated to help your team focus their efforts on key performance issues instead of handling mundane and error-prone technical requirements.
The risk of failure is greatly reduced.
Modernization Is Changing The User Interface Of An App
It is popular to redesign the user interface. This makes it easier to navigate and looks more appealing. Most applications are complex, and a simple UI change won't improve the user experience.
UI only affects the usability part of UX. Other components like extensibility, accessibility, and others depend on the app's technology composition.
Modernization initiatives will also require intervention at the technology layer to have any impact on the app experience level.
Modernizing Your Application Has Many Benefits
Modernizing your applications will help you stay competitive and flexible. You can invest in key technologies like artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and machine learning.
It is also a great way to increase customer engagement and expand your user base.
Learn why enterprises should modernize their legacy applications:
Get Rid Of Technical Debt
It is a system with bugs, high application maintenance costs, and a lack of scalability. Businesses must allocate 10% to 20% of the budget for product development to resolve tech debt.
Modernization eliminates the need for a complete replacement of your current systems. You will not have to spend an arm and a leg to maintain outdated code.
Instead, you can invest in a robust and healthy app.
Overall Productivity Can Be Improved
Admin and development teams are more productive when they access advanced technologies and tools that align with current trends.
It is also easier to automate repetitive work, train recruits, reduce the monotony of work, and increase employee productivity.
Additional Revenue Streams
Adding new services and features will satisfy your customers and make you a business winner. Legacy systems aren't flexible enough to meet the challenges of today.
Adding new features and services is easier with application remodeling. This leads to a better customer experience and higher profits. Referrals from customers also increase, which leads to more leads.
Competitive Edge
Outdated legacy systems cannot satisfy the needs of modern clients. This can lead them to use your competitor's application with more features.
Modernization is a natural advantage, especially if your competitors are still considering it. It also allows you to integrate cutting-edge technologies and platforms to keep up with the competition. With legacy applications, you can't access data collected from different geographical locations in real time.
Cost Savings
Migrating to cloud computing will save you money by avoiding needing a separate data center on-site, which would have increased your overhead.
Cloud migration can also reduce your operating costs. Cloud databases offer a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where you pay only for the service.
Application Modernization Challenges
Today's Tech leaders are faced with complex app scenarios that include different technologies, frameworks, infrastructures, and goals, all of which overlap with the existing business goals and processes.
There are also challenges relating to the cultural shift in the IT landscape and budget for app development. You may also face other challenges in the application modernization process.
Application Modernization Budget
Many organizations cannot adapt their apps for the modern world because of cost. Estimating the exact budget for running the legacy application in its upgraded version is difficult.
Cloud platforms and infrastructure costs are high and can vary.
You must break down the monolithic legacy application into smaller components to make the process more budget-friendly.
You can then hire a team of developers with expertise in all aspects of development to assist you in creating the combinations you desire. Your modernization budget should be flexible to accommodate unforeseen costs, such as scaling your workforce or integrating newer technologies.
Heavy Legacy Ecosystem
The business benefits of modernizing the legacy ecosystem are significant. The upstream and downstream apps would continue to use antiquated technologies, numerous protocols, and file formats.
Bringing them all over on a modern platform is not the best idea.
It would help if you modernized critical applications and then moved on to the rest. You can also design and implement applications that support legacy practices to ensure the business flows are not disrupted during the transition.
Insufficient Knowledge
The lack of appropriate knowledge is a major roadblock to modernizing applications. The following are some of the reasons.
- The original app developers no longer work for the company or on the same project.
- The tech documentation is either missing or irrelevant.
- No third-party libraries or resources.
- The source code is heavily corrected.
Another alternative is to select a new function from the code manually. This can be time-consuming due to the outdated or non-existent code.
Data Migration
The legacy ecosystems are full of data, whether it is in the form of gigabytes or terabytes. Legacy systems also use an older EBCDIC-based encoding, while modern systems are ASCII based.
The data migration process may seem complicated because of these factors.
Some ETL plugins and tools are available to help with data migration. You'd still need a framework for data files that don't use the current encoding.
You can also migrate system VSAM to NoSQL and SQL databases.
A UK-based fintech company with rapid growth wanted to update its legacy frontend to a component-based dynamic architecture for a better experience.
They modernized the legacy frontend app by implementing data migration and migration strategies. They migrated thousands of terabytes worth of user data.
Modernization Of Application Approaches
An efficient modernization strategy can reduce the resources required to run an app, improve dependability and resilience, and increase uptime.
Before deciding, it is important to consider some of the most popular options for modernizing the applications.
Rehost
Rehosting, or the lift & shift concept, involves moving key app resources to a cloud-based database from an on-premises data center.
The infrastructure, including network resources and cloud-based storage, is moved to cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). Still, the app's codebase is left untouched.
Refactor
Refactoring is designed to make you cloud-friendly in this booming digital age. This includes app modifications and code changes to take advantage of public clouds.
Refactoring allows you to create independent services that make the app's functionalities accessible.
Re-architect
Monolithic applications are re-architected according to the microservices architecture, separated into clusters of services, and placed in containers.
You get different benefits like faster time-to-market, reduced costs, and business agility.
Rebuild
The Rebuild approach is similar to re-architect, except it starts from scratch rather than remodeling. This approach allows you to rewrite an app for the cloud that will help you boost innovation, reduce overall development costs, and harness technological advances.
Replace
You can replace your legacy application with a cloud-based one if it still has useful functionality.
It is a good idea to overhaul the monolithic app according to modern microservices architecture. Replacing proprietary plugins or outdated technologies with open-source alternatives may be necessary.
Read More: Importance of Application Modernization Solutions
Application Modernization Best Practices
In a world dominated by the cloud, it's important to have constantly updated applications. This will ensure integration, stability, security of data, and scalability.
These application modernization practices will help you start your enterprise application modernization journey.
Prioritize And Understand The Apps That You Want To Modernize
You must first conduct thorough research on an app and all its dependencies. Start by analyzing the app's performance and integration with other systems in the ecosystem.
Also, you can look at how the app performs under different conditions.
Set Smaller Modernization Goals
It is often ineffective to plan out your primary goals ahead of time. This can lead to incomplete or late projects.
Focusing on reducing cycle time and iterating toward smaller goals will have a higher chance of success. Planning for major milestones should include the small steps that are between them. You can reduce engineering risks by dividing the project goals into smaller subgoals.
Focus on App Portability
Most modernization projects do not reach their full potential because development teams focus on migrating to a new host model rather than improving application portability.
Doing this is a big mistake because portability is important for every application. Prioritizing portability will make your applications future-ready and able to adapt to rapid changes in business. You can also migrate quickly and easily to a different environment without major overhauls.
Watch Your App At All Times
Monitoring an application's logs, metrics, and performance data continuously can be very beneficial. Getting better visibility of multi-cloud costs for different teams is complex.
You should also get consumption data from the other clouds to see charges, security vulnerabilities, and platform availability.
Configuring open-source tools such as Fluentd Jaeger Elastic Grafana helps create an application monitoring dashboard.
A DevOps system also improves cloud observability and containerized applications.
Modernizing your application does not have to be a one-time solution. It is a continuous process as new technologies and customer needs emerge.
A reputable partner can help you make your legacy apps more cloud-efficient and agile.
Enterprise applications are critical to the success of any company. They play a key role in delivering on customer expectations.
CIOs must constantly evaluate their application landscape to achieve specific goals, such as "Are my core applications meeting (or exceeding) the operational needs of both internal stakeholders and external stakeholders?"
The answer to the above-asked question is not simple. It may require a comprehensive evaluation of the criteria for the correct answer.
CIOs should consider the following criteria:
End-User Experience
The user interface of an application can make or break the user experience. User interfaces of apps that are not updated to match the business process often do not allow minimal user interaction or involve complex steps.
These UIs impact the user experience and reduce productivity. Bottom line: If applications are complex or have an outdated UI, users are likely to avoid them.
Integration Of Other Enterprise Applications
Suppose your applications cannot leverage the common database storage models and architectural designs that create data silos or do not benefit from APIs to exchange data with other enterprise apps.
In that case, it's time to consider modernization.
Integrity and agility are at the heart of legacy modernization. APIs play a crucial role in modernizing legacy systems.
They help bridge the gap between old and new applications. Data silos and process disruptions can occur if your applications do not leverage common architectural and database models.
By decoupling processes from IT systems and individual applications, data exchange between applications will help you achieve agility.
Automation
Automation is a key enabler of digital transformation and legacy modernization. Customers are looking for simple and effective ways to communicate with businesses in the digital age.
Automation allows businesses to save time by automating low-value and repetitive tasks. It also helps them redesign critical business workflows and adopt new business strategies. Automation of workflows and processes helps enterprises to improve their relationship with customers and consumers and speed up product and service innovations.
Performance
Your business's success depends on your applications' performance and availability. Relying upon outdated legacy systems may hinder your operations, lead to customer dissatisfaction and cause your business to lose its charm.
You can recognize the new risks and opportunities associated with employing existing technology by modernizing legacy software.
Legacy modernization allows businesses to improve application performance without having to replace the old system.
Security
CIOs have always placed security at the forefront of their priorities, and cyber risks are now a regular occurrence for many companies.
The support and updates for legacy applications are often lacking, which increases the risk of intruders gaining control and losing vital information. Legacy modernization, on the other hand, ensures regulatory compliance while improving security.
Maintenance And Upgrades
Lack of technical expertise is a major problem for legacy systems. Due to a shortage of qualified personnel, it can be hard to upgrade applications created using COBOL.
Integrating Cobol applications into modern cloud-based platforms can be time-consuming and expensive. Modernizing legacy applications helps businesses to reduce their overall TCO while also ensuring that they are compatible with ongoing changes.
Not All Modernization Projects Have The Same Value
It is not unusual for legacy application modernization to fail:
Using Big-Bang Approaches
Re-architecting legacy applications that are large can be expensive, time-consuming, and take up most of your internal resources' time.
Some businesses take a big-bang strategy and think about rapidly shifting their business environment to profit from legacy modernization. When moving applications to the cloud in a large-scale manner, code can freeze.
This leads to breakdowns and poor customer service. Adopting a progressive, phase-wise approach to legacy modernization can reduce the risk of unanticipated downtimes and a disconnected customer experience.
The Integration Challenges Between Legacy Applications And Modern Applications
Modern businesses use different cloud platforms. It is, therefore, critical to achieve a certain level of integration and interconnection between these platforms and legacy applications.
Some of these apps may be hosted on-premises, and others in the cloud technologies. When integrating legacy applications and modernizing the technology, many companies fail to understand how data flows are driving revenue fully.
This leads to data silos and a lack of visibility from end to end. A partner with extensive experience and high-level skills is required to re-architect the entire application landscape.
In-house attempts to accomplish this task are fraught with failure.
Customer Experience
People and processes are more important than technology in the transformation process. These days, customers expect better and faster solutions at low costs.
Legacy applications are unable to track customer behavior in real-time, so they can't personalize and enhance customer experience.
Personalization is a challenge that businesses facing legacy applications face in the age of privacy regulations.
This can lead to revenue loss and the exploration of new ways to generate revenue.
Slow Deployment
Technology is rapidly changing the nature of business requirements. Therefore, investment processes in modern technologies must also evolve.
CIOs are aware that their legacy core systems do not have the agility needed to scale and develop innovative technology solutions.
A report states that enterprises will have to spend three times more to modernize legacy applications. This means they'll be spending 70% of their IT budgets to maintain legacy systems.
Slow technology investment leads to a lack of the right data at the right moment. This further delays the delivery of value to the customer.
Assessment Of Resources
For legacy modernization and digital conversion, it is necessary to have expertise in fine-tuning applications and architectures.
This will help achieve cost optimization and greater responsiveness. Lack of specialized assistance is one of the main roadblocks in the ongoing project of legacy modernization. Delays in deploying and finding a team could lead to missed deadlines and the project becoming obsolete.
Modernizing Applications Is Essential For Digital Transformation
Technology is a fast-moving force in the world. It's no longer the big that always beats the small. Early adopters are the ones who beat the slow.
The lack of tangible success results is a problem for enterprises despite their digital transformation and migration initiatives. In the process of digital transformation, companies must also modernize their legacy applications. This can be done by adopting techniques such as refactoring and re-architecture.
Modernizing legacy applications is essential to achieving digital transformation. Modernization of legacy applications can accelerate time-to-market, unlock value from existing apps, and enhance operational excellence while becoming more innovative and agile.
Conclusion
Digital transformation journey and legacy modernization are not achieved in one moment.
It's more of a journey to enable you to transform your IT environment based on the current and future needs for innovation. In the last decade, there have been many changes in how businesses do business. But customer expectations have also changed dramatically.
Today, enterprises are under enormous pressure to meet these rapidly changing customer expectations. Global marketplaces offer a wide range of products and services to customers, but sellers face a lot of pressure to meet their expectations.
A failure at any stage of the customer journey can be costly for a business. It only takes one influential person to post negative feedback online!
