Legacy application modernization reduces technology risks, improves scalability, and supports long-term growth.
Outdated applications and legacy systems lead to greater costs, less innovation, more security risks, and increased challenges in supporting business growth. Modernization of applications and platforms is the process of updating systems and building infrastructure to prepare for future business needs.
An Overview
What Is Application & Platform Modernization?
To modernize an application and platform, a business is required to assess the current business needs against its existing technology. Beyond moving an application to the cloud, a business can improve its architecture, data, and user experience, amongst many other things, in the way it builds, delivers, and manages software.
Key areas include:
- Bringing the change from monolithic to microservices architectures
- Leveraging cloud-native technologies (such as containers, Kubernetes and serverless)
- Designing and implementing systems in an API-first, event-driven manner
- Upgrading data platforms and user interfaces
- DevOps, CI/CD and automation are part of application modernization.
When Should Businesses Modernize?
Modernization becomes important when:
- The balance between costs of legacy support and system enhancements or integrations becomes too high.
- The business is pressured to support rapidreleasese or frequently changing business requirements.
- The systems are security and/or compliance risks.
- There are negative impacts on business growth due to legacy systems.
Modernize Your Legacy Applications
Benefits of Modernization
A well-planned modernization program can help businesses achieve:
| Benefit | Business Value |
|---|---|
| Lower costs | Less maintenance and infrastructure expense |
| Faster releases | Quicker delivery of new features |
| Better scalability | Easier support for changing workloads |
| Stronger security | Better support for security and compliance |
| Better user experience | Improved web and mobile experiences |
| Greater agility | Faster response to business needs |
| AI and automation readiness | Stronger technology foundation for new capabilities |
Common Modernization Strategies
An approach is selected for each application based on its condition and value, and anticipated future requirements.
- Rehost: Simply move the application as is with minimal changes.
- Refactor: Modify and enhance the existing code and structure.
- Rearchitect: Alter the application architecture significantly.
- Rebuild: Develop the application with newer technologies.
- Replace: Move to a SaaS or commercial solution.
Steps for Successful Modernization
- Assess applications – Business Value, Technology, Risk, and Dependencies
- Determine the Target Architecture – Decide the future technology and architecture standards
- Develop a Roadmap – Rank order applications and distribute work into phases
- Select the Best Strategy – Define the best approach for each application
- Modernize gradually – Replace legacy capabilities incrementally
- Move and Validate Data – Move, Test, and Reconcile Data
- Improve Delivery – Use of DevOps, CI/CD, Automated Testing and Monitoring
- Test and Optimize – Test before use and Optimize after use
- Prepare the Environment – Train people on the internal support of the modern environment
Key Challenges
Modernization can also involve:
- Business disruption during the modernization process
- Specific complex dependencies due to legacy systems
- Relatively high modernization costs
- Gaps in required technical skills
- Technical debt
- Resistance to change
- During the modernization of data
- Security and compliance concerns
- Phased modernization can aid the mitigation of these risks.
A phased approach can help businesses manage these risks more effectively.
Modernization Examples
Banking: A mid-sized bank used microservices and Cloud technologies to upgrade their lending product. The bank saw the processing time of loans reduced by more than 70 percent and the development of new digital products in weeks instead of months.
Manufacturing: A manufacturing company deployed a system that better tracked the supply chain and had a significantly higher system availability rate by transitioning monolithic ERP systems to one that was API-first and composable.
Retail: A retailer moved from their on-premises ecommerce platform to the cloud-based headless ecommerce platform,m which improved site speed and conversion rate, while allowing for easy new sales channels to be added.
Best Practices
For better results, businesses should:
- Prioritize business value, not antiquated technology.
- Modernize in continuous, progressive stages.
- Invest in testing and monitoring from the onset.
- Improve processes in parallel with technology.
- Develop internal know-how
- Evaluate results of business modernization.
- Keep security, compliance, performanceoptimalm throughout.
- Improve systems post-modernization.
Conclusion
Modernizaton of applications and platforms by businesses allows for a somewhat controlled and less risky replacement of legacy technologies with technologies that are easier to maintain, easier to scale,d more secure and easier to improve.
The most benefits come from having the right assessment, roadmap, and modernization approach that is phased. A business should look at its modernization efforts as a process that, once in motion, provides the ability to meet the dynamic and changing needs of the business and support its long-term growth.
