What is Application Modernisation?
Application Modernization, also known as software modernization, entails the rewriting or adaptation of outdated systems to contemporary ones. The approach varies based on the legacy system’s state, organizational challenges, and digital transformation goals. It goes beyond mere replacement, embracing diverse strategies to migrate, update, and optimize legacy systems toward modern architecture. A legacy application, despite using outdated technology, persists due to ongoing business relevance. Legacy code within such apps may become obsolete, hindering maintenance and complicating updates and integration with other systems or hardware.
Importance Application Modernisation
As organizations accelerate digital transformation, the importance of new technologies for business success becomes clear. The shift to a “combinatorial” technology era underscores the need for cohesive system and application integration. Gartner projects that cloud spending will surpass IT spending by 2025, rendering on-premise monolithic solutions obsolete. Legacy applications accumulate issues, leading to high maintenance costs, incompatibility with modern technologies, costly integrations, and reduced business agility. Application modernization, driven by business needs, not just cost, offers significant ROI and becomes imperative to remove obstacles hindering business initiatives and processes.
Step by Step Strategy for Application Modernisation
Step 1: Application Evaluation
To thoroughly evaluate your application portfolio for modernization, asking pertinent questions is essential. Overlooking challenges in this process can result in expensive mistakes and delays. The accompanying image outlines critical inquiries related to funding, resources, project expertise, and technological intricacies.
This strategy helps minimize risks, ensuring maximum value from your modernization efforts. Legacy applications lacking alignment with contemporary business standards in terms of value, suitability, and agility should undergo upgrades. Indications such as intricate technology or compromised security, compliance, support, and scalability signal the necessity for prompt modernization.
Step 2: Addressing Challenges
Executing application modernization necessitates a substantial change in organizational culture, affecting tech-savvy employees. Persuading leadership of project importance and costs is vital for effective communication and employee support. Strategies like resource allocation, timing optimization, open communication, and encouragement bolster employee backing.
AI-powered tools aid decision-makers in analyzing complexity metrics, enabling a data-driven approach to prioritize modernization. Demonstrating concrete benefits through actual analysis data fosters successful employee acceptance.
Step 3: Application Modernization Tools
Early investment in suitable tools and technologies is pivotal for successful application modernization. Analyzing mainframe code offers insights into inter-relationships, dependencies, and complexity, laying the groundwork for legacy modernization by assessing associated risks. Precise measurement of tech debt using available tools is crucial for identifying sources and understanding its negative impact on innovation. AI-powered solutions assess application complexity based on dependencies and code modularity, evaluating change risks and overall tech debt.
Benchmarking aging frameworks for tech debt, risks, and complexity is essential, integrating seamlessly with an automated modernization solution and facilitating re-architecting, refactoring, or rewriting applications. Technologies such as microservices and containerization enhance flexibility and scalability for legacy applications.
Step 4: Budget
Securing support from top executives and establishing a budget are vital stages in the modernization journey. Analyzing acquired data aids in estimating the initiative's budget. However, funding app modernization deviates from conventional IT budgeting, posing greater uncertainty, particularly for organizations dependent on legacy applications.
This ongoing tech transformation introduces uncertainties affecting both the organization and its budget. Assessing ROI (Return on investment) and TCO (total cost of ownership) is crucial to demonstrate the project's value and garner decision-maker support.
Step 5: Tactical Approach
After pinpointing the most crucial business-critical applications, assess their potential for enhanced performance, reliability, and scalability through modernization. Consider the influence of transforming these applications on factors like churn, market share, profitability, revenue, and customer experience based on your target market and industry. Develop measurable and realistic IT and business goals aligned with objectives such as revenue growth, enhanced customer experiences, improved profitability, and increased market share.
Step 6: Impact
Consider diverse application modernization options, varying in ease, impact, and risks. Choose approaches that align with your current environment, motivations, and long-term strategy: (1) Rehost - move the application to new infrastructure without significant code changes. (2) Refactor - make substantial source code modifications, such as splitting monolithic apps. (3) Re-architect - completely redesign the application for enhanced capabilities. (4) Rebuild - construct components from scratch to introduce new technologies. (5) Replace - identify the root cause and retire the legacy application. Regardless of the chosen approach, ensuring the security of applications and cloud-based data demands careful consideration and expertise.
Step 7: Right Partner
Selecting the right modernization partner is crucial for a potentially lengthy, costly, and daunting application modernization endeavor. A stable organization, both in R&D and at the executive level, ensures project success. Identifying experienced partners is vital to streamline activities, minimize chaos, and achieve desired results.
Step 8: Measuring Goals
Executing and measuring changes against your goals is essential for sustaining software delivery performance and preventing modernized applications from becoming legacy systems again. Embrace a continuous modernization approach to avoid wasted efforts. Consistently benchmark and measure results, using KPIs established through the steps mentioned earlier to track progress towards organizational goals. This provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of your application modernization strategy and its impact on processes and operations.
Tools used for Application Modernisation
Next-generation eCommerce platforms, like BigCommerce and Commercetools, merge traditional CMS with eCommerce for transformative omnichannel experiences. BigCommerce’s MACH architecture supports scalable omnichannel and headless commerce, offering customizable templates and unlimited bandwidth. Commerce tools, with Composable architecture, emphasizes microservices and modern tools. AI integration enhances virtual assistance, business process automation, help services, and forecasting. The rising trend of composability ensures high flexibility, agility, component reusability, and quick adaptation to changing user demands in product architecture. The growth of multi-cloud usage, leveraging diverse providers for varied features, enables faster workload management with infrastructure like APIs, containers, and middleware.
Application Modernisation Examples
Application modernisation is exemplified in various industries. For instance, legacy financial systems upgrade to cloud-native platforms for enhanced security and efficiency. Healthcare apps adopt microservices architecture, improving scalability. Retail systems shift to modern e-commerce platforms for seamless customer experiences. These examples showcase the diverse ways organizations modernize applications to meet evolving technological and business demands.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Application Modernization is a dynamic process crucial for organizations navigating digital transformation. Adapting legacy systems to contemporary standards enhances efficiency and ensures compatibility with evolving technologies. Recognizing the significance of modernization and choosing appropriate strategies are vital steps in optimizing business operations, fostering innovation, and achieving sustained success in the rapidly changing technological landscape.
