What is Application Modernization?
Guide to Application Modernization: From A to Z
Application modernization is all about updating outdated applications using the latest technology to improve their functionality, scalability, and efficiency. For instance, a bank might modernize its core banking system by moving it to a cloud-based architecture, integrating it with mobile banking apps, and using AI to automate fraud detection. This leads to faster transactions, improved user experience, and cost savings for the bank.
Why Modernize Legacy Applications?
Modernizing legacy applications is crucial for businesses. By doing so, they can update their software, leverage modern infrastructure, tools, and technologies, and reduce the resources and costs of running applications. Here are the key benefits:
- Digital Transformation: Digitization brings new opportunities for businesses, enabling them to transform faster by adopting DevOps and cloud-native tools.
- Faster Delivery: Adopting DevOps accelerates the continuous delivery process, fostering a culture of automation. With quick code changes, you can deploy software faster with less human intervention.
- Hybrid Multicloud Platform: Hybrid and multi-cloud platforms help automate operations. Build once and deploy to the cloud whenever you want.
- Reduce Integration and Build Time: With DevOps, you can use multiple code streams into one without worrying about changes in the current environment.
Looking to modernize your legacy application? Our expert technical consultant will help you define a modernization strategy and ensure your software stays adaptable, secure, and up-to-date with the latest technology trends.
4-Step Application Modernization Strategy
1. Evaluate Legacy Systems
Start the process with an application assessment, identifying issues or areas for improvement, and determining the costs and benefits of updating or replacing the system. It's recommended to hire an app modernization consultant to assess the best approach to modernizing a legacy application and determine what components need to be modernized.
List of components you can modernize:
- App Infrastructure
- App Architectures and Tech Stack
- App Integrations
- App UI/UX
2. Define the Problems
Define the actual problem causing friction with the legacy system and identify what is pushing users away. Find out what works and what doesn't to determine the modernization approach.
3. Pick a Suitable Application Modernization Strategy
Choose an appropriate modernization approach that meets your specific needs. Common approaches include:
- Rehosting (Lift and Shift)
- Refactoring
- Replatforming
- Encapsulating & Exposing Functionality via APIs
- Rearchitecting
- Rebuilding/Rewriting
- Replacement
4. Perform Application Modernization & Optimize
Identify different patterns of application modernization and choose the right strategy. Regular monitoring and optimization are essential to ensure the application works seamlessly.
Key Technologies for Application Modernization
- Cloud Native Computing
- Containers & Kubernetes
- Microservices
- Orchestration & Automation
- Private, Hybrid, & Multi-cloud
Harness these technologies to streamline the modernization process and enable seamless migration, application deployment, and automation.
Application Modernization Best Practices
- Prioritize Apps for Modernization: Identify and prioritize the apps in your portfolio based on their performance, integration, and importance within the ecosystem.
- Set Smaller Modernization Goals: Break down the modernization project into subgoals to effectively respond to changing needs and mitigate risks.
- Look for App Portability: Focus on increasing the app's portability rather than migrating to a new hosting model. This ensures future readiness against rapid business changes and easy migration to new environments.
- Monitor Your Application: Regularly monitor your application for logs, metrics, and traces to evaluate its performance. Keep track of consumption data from other clouds, security vulnerabilities, and platform availability to create a dashboard and monitoring with open-source tools like Fluentd, Jaeger, Elastic, and Grafana.
Hire dedicated developers to modernize your legacy app by taking advantage of Space-O's flexible hiring model. With our expertise, you can unlock new opportunities for growth and innovation while navigating the complex world of application modernization.
Modernizing legacy applications is essential for businesses to utilize modern infrastructure, tools, and technologies such as cloud native computing, containers, Kubernetes, microservices, and orchestration. This enables streamlined modernization processes, seamless migration, and automation.
By adopting a 4-step strategy that includes evaluating legacy systems, defining problems, choosing a suitable application modernization strategy, and performing modernization while optimizing performance, you can ensure your applications stay adaptable, secure, and up-to-date with the latest technology trends.
