How to Undertake Legacy Application Modernization: A Step-by-Step Approach

Quick Summary: 79% of app modernization projects fail. Do you know why? Often, it’s a lack of a well-defined modernization strategy. Today, we will take you through a step-by-step approach to build a solid app modernization strategy, ensuring your legacy upgradation project joins the successful 21% row and succeeds in today’s dynamic techade. Read on to know more!

Around 70% of enterprise IT budgets go towards maintaining/modernizing existing legacy systems. This clearly shows companies are spending a lot of funds on legacy application modernization to maintain their existing enterprise applications. Because it is the only way of preserving their status quo and navigate through digital transformation.

In fact, 79% said conventional apps are hindering their firm’s digital transformation initiatives and growth. That’s why majority of businesses aim to give their legacy applications a modern infrastructure, including cloud, SaaS and containers, holding great promise for companies wanting to reduce their IT expenditure and convert savings into a competitive advantage.

But what should fast-moving businesses do to successfully modernize their legacy systems? Read on to discover everything to know about a strategic modernization process, best-fit tech stack, and a lot more.

Of course, app modernization makes sense if done right. So, let’s dig in!

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Introducing Legacy Applications

Legacy applications are software systems built on conventional technologies that are still in use today. They may lack the modern features and user-friendly interfaces of modern-day applications, but they often perform essential tasks that keep businesses running.

Considering the speed-first and dynamic nature of today’s market, such conventional applications are difficult to maintain and can hinder a lot of challenges for modern-day businesses to survive, like

• Code bloat
• Difficult integrations
• Slow load times and performance issues
• Inability to keep up with latest technologies
• Poor customer experience
• Security threats and compliance risks

Application Assessment Before Modernization

The best application modernization strategy suggests that going through an application assessment is imperative. Taking inventory is the first step to knowing where to begin and how to go about this challenging transformation.

Once you are prepared with the list, start putting things in place to increase the value of modernization. You may also consider potential values as how crucial the specific application is to your customer's experience and the organization's future.

Applications that fall into the top categories are the ones that hold high value, low effort with the least troublesome aspects to begin the modernization project.

However, the trickiest decision involves the high-value apps that make movement difficult. For such apps, it need not be an all-in-all strategy on the first day. These approaches involve managing app modernization budget and risks while moving the portfolio in the right direction.

Key Technologies Used for Application Modernization

There are several technological components in modernization, which include:

1. Serverless Computing: Cloud-based models execute functions in the cloud, off-the premise, do not eradicate server requirements, despite their name. The technology outsources the software code to a cloud service provider that runs it based on respective requests.

2. Kubernetes and Containers: Kubernetes services helps developers to build consistent and scalable applications across different environments. Having such flexibility offers multiple benefits to an organization migrating to the cloud.

3. Refactor Monolith into Microservices: Monolithic applications are challenging to update due to architectural reasons. As the components are packed together, it is often difficult and expensive to add new features due to integration complexities. Moreover, scaling monolithic applications can be costly. Scaling an entire application could present many challenges and might even lead to complications. Alternatively, companies are trying to transform monolithic applications into relevant microservices.

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How to Formulate a Strong Application Modernization Strategy

The key to a successful app modernization is to strategize and pick the essentials like speed, performance, cloud, scale, feature development, etc. Anything that can help an application increase ROI and improve overall customer experience is excellent. Here we have collected five integral steps to carry out and build a solid modernization strategy:

#1: List Mission-Critical Applications

Firstly, it is critical to identify high-value assets. Consider how those applications could benefit from improved performance, scalability, reliability, and security.

Make sure you are clear about the functions of the application, the problem areas, and the opportunities. Consider maintenance costs and their modernization benefits. From that point, dig deep into the applications specifics like how services are delivered, who all can leverage it, and its capabilities and limitations. Deep data is highly beneficial for such insights. This data is also equally crucial to agencies, but they must derive data from stakeholders as well.

With all this data, leaders are equipped to make precise decisions about the applications and invest in this initiative, thus linking modernization goals to the priorities of the mission outcomes.

#2: Check Resource Inventory

Application modernization involves technical as well as cultural challenges. A successful strategy must look into both.

To assist transformation efforts, companies must identify leaders possessing granular command over applications and interdependence, including the type of application, connected sources like database-network-storage and others, and maintenance.

Skillsets in the team should be a priority. Proper understanding of development methods and IT support is pivotal.

#3: Find the Right Modernization Approach

Response ranges from adding features to existing architecture, ensuring better alignments with end-user needs, reconstructing and retooling the infrastructure – anything can be involved. With containers, modern tech stacks, app migration to cloud, and microservices, it is easier to build, deploy and manage government applications and even scale them to meet the demand.

#4: Rearchitect & Refactor or Rewrite

Rebuilding applications is challenging. It involves rewriting various portions of an application right from scratch by preserving its original specifications and scope. If any organization changes the original software code to access the new architecture of an application with desired capabilities, it is known as rearchitect.

If this process restructures and improves the existing code without altering external behavior, it is known as refactoring.

While the rearchitect approach has moderate risks involved with costs, it produces positive results. For instance, contemporary COBOL technology includes different features primarily intended to ease and accelerate alternations in the original application. As a result, rapid changes are expected to the COBOL source code.

#5: Re-platform or Rehost

A survey found that over 55% of the retail enterprise businesses still relied on the mainframe to complete business transactions. Mainframe modernization, or moving off the mainframe, may require significant changes to the source code or application to migrate it to another runtime platform. Just like moving an app to the cloud, the primary concern is data security. In the case of mainframe modernization, it may be required to entrust the organization's data security to a migration specialist.

Rehosting means moving an application to a new infrastructure, be it physical or cloud, without making any alterations to the source code or even changing the features.

Critical Technology Trends for Application Modernization Strategies

To keep up with speed-first market dynamics, every business needs to build an application that is agile, adaptable, and secure. For that, we are presenting six crucial technology trends that can reshape your app modernization strategies, helping you achieve the speed, sustainability, and efficiency you need to thrive. Let’s explore:

1. Microservices Architecture

Having an application that scales alongside your organization is a new business imperative. Because monolithic applications can become cumbersome and slow down innovation. That's where microservices architecture offers a solution by breaking down complex applications into smaller, independent services. This allows for faster development cycles, easier maintenance, and improved scalability.

2. Low-Code/No-Code Development

Low-code and no-code development platforms are revolutionizing the way applications are built. These platforms allow users with little to no coding experience to create powerful applications. This democratizes application development and empowers business users to solve problems and automate tasks without relying on IT departments.

3. DevOps

DevOps is a cultural shift that breaks down the silos between development and operations teams. By working together more closely, these teams can deliver applications faster and more reliably. DevOps practices such as continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) automate the software development process, leading to fewer errors and faster deployments.

4. Containerization

Containers are a lightweight virtualization technology that packages an application with all its dependencies into a standalone unit. This makes applications easier to deploy and run across different environments. Containerization technologies like Docker and Kubernetes are essential for building and deploying cloud-native applications.

5. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are transforming the way applications are built. By integrating AI and ML into your applications, you can add intelligence and automation to tasks that were once manual and tedious. This can improve the user experience, automate decision-making, and unlock new possibilities for your business.

6. Blockchain Integration

Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that offers a secure and transparent way to store and share data. Blockchain can be integrated into applications to improve security, traceability, and trust. This is especially valuable for applications that deal with sensitive data or require a high degree of collaboration.

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Closing RemarksModernizing an application has become a strategic business requirement today. By leveraging strategic modernization, you are not just giving your apps a facelift; you are laying the foundation for next-gen innovation and digital transformation.Undoubtedly, legacy application modernization services offer endless opportunities, whether it is mainframe modernization or simply moving to the cloud. It's high time that businesses should leave their monolithic apps far behind and move towards an advanced and future-ready approach. To unlock the full potential of these next-gen modernization trends, it is wise to partner with a reliable app modernization company. They bring expertise, tools, and strategic approach to better navigate your app upgradation journey and transform your applications into the strategic assets that drive real revenue for your firm.So, without any further ado, claim our expert consultation and discuss your requirements.