Modernize Your IT Infrastructure: A Guide to Legacy Application Modernization

With the rate of technological change, businesses face a key challenge: how to keep their software applications current and competitive while protecting their existing investments. While digital transformation often takes the headlines, keeping your critical applications up to date is just as important for enterprise success. 

App modernization is a critical part of any good business strategy, with many modernization solutions out there ready to help transform existing applications across the infrastructure, software, and data-driven domains.

In this article, we dive deep into application modernization, including what it is, the benefits of cloud and other modern technologies, how to assess your environment, and the best practices to begin modernizing straight away.

What is Application Modernization?

Application modernization is the process of updating legacy software applications to modern technologies, including up-to-date hosting, capabilities, processes, and infrastructure. You can think of it like renovating an old house – you’re not tearing everything down, but updating and improving what’s already there to meet current and future business needs.

Because technology moves so fast, legacy applications quickly become out-of-date, relying on outdated platforms, programming languages, and technologies that may no longer be supported, or worse, become a cyber risk. These systems, often run on-premises, could be running on mainframes or use outdated databases, making them expensive to maintain and difficult to integrate with newer technologies. 

Application modernization works to optimize, migrate, and transform these older systems into modern, cloud-ready applications that support business growth and productivity. 

The Benefits of Legacy Application Modernization

Modernizing your legacy applications offers numerous advantages that significantly impact your business’s bottom line and operational efficiency. Let’s take a look at the most popular benefits on offer.

• Better User Experience: Modern applications provide intuitive interfaces and improved functionality that today’s users expect. Everyone will appreciate faster response times and the ability to access applications from any device, improving the customer experience, reducing employee workload, and helping to generate improved ROI. 
  
• Reduced Maintenance Costs: Talking of ROI, legacy systems often require specialized knowledge and increasingly rare expertise to maintain. By pivoting to a modernized application, you have the opportunity to significantly cut maintenance costs, with many organizations reporting savings of up to 30-50% following legacy modernization. 
  
• Enhanced Security: Older application portfolios may have security vulnerabilities that can’t be patched, whereas modern applications include up-to-date security features that protect against new threats. This is particularly crucial for cloud environments, where outdated technologies lay exposed to cyber threats that are constantly evolving.
  
• Improved Scalability: Modern applications can easily scale up or down based on demand, especially when deployed in modern cloud native setups. On the flip side, old on-premises technologies are harder to deploy, upgrade, and scale, limiting business growth and application delivery. Cloud infrastructure modernization improves flexibility and ensures your systems can handle growth without requiring major infrastructure investments.
  
• Better Integration Capabilities: Modern applications can easily connect with other systems through APIs and standard protocols, enabling better data sharing and automation across your organization. With most businesses using hundreds of different systems, strong integrations can take enterprises to the next level and create new data sharing opportunities. 

5 Common App Modernization Challenges

While the benefits of application modernization are clear, app modernization isn’t just a simple lift and shift. Organizations often face several challenges during the process — here are the five most common hurdles and how to address them:

• Data Migration Complexity: Legacy systems often contain years or decades of crucial business data, and moving it to modern systems, while maintaining its integrity and relationships, can be complex. Success requires careful planning, thorough testing, and possibly custom migration tools and services to ensure no critical information is lost or corrupted during the transition.
  
• Resistance to Change: Employees who have worked with legacy systems for years may resist switching to new applications due to the fear of the unknown. Organizations must invest in change management, provide comprehensive training, and involve end-users in the modernization process to help overcome this to ensure successful software modernization.
  
• Budget Constraints: Application modernization projects, especially cloud migrations, can require significant investment. Alongside this, costs can quickly escalate if not managed properly, causing project budgets to spiral out of control. To help, break down the modernization into smaller, manageable phases and prioritize applications that will deliver the quickest return on investment. Consider hybrid cloud and public cloud solutions, rather than private cloud solutions, to reduce upfront infrastructure costs.
  
• Business Continuity: Maintaining normal business operations during modernization is a tough balance act, with teams focused on the goal of application modernization. Organizations need to plan for this increased workload to ensure minimal disruption, and may need to run legacy and modern systems in parallel during the transition. This requires careful orchestration and clear communication with all stakeholders.
  
• Technical Skill Gaps: Modern technologies require different skill sets than legacy systems. Organizations often struggle to find professionals who understand both the old and new application development and technology journeys. Consider partnering with experienced modernization specialists, investing in training for your existing team, and using a defined project management framework to help bridge the gap and support your team. 

How to Complete an Application Modernization Assessment

Now that you know what app modernization is, you’re probably wondering how to get started in your own enterprise. Here’s a high-level plan to help you assess your own architecture:

First, create an inventory of your existing application portfolio. Document each application’s purpose, users, technology stack, and business value. This inventory is a key part of the process of application modernization, helping you prioritize which applications to modernize first.

Next, evaluate each application’s technical debt. Look at factors such as:

• The age, support, and toxicity of the technology stack
• Integration capabilities with modern systems
• Security vulnerabilities, including known risks or supporting technologies
• Performance issues, and the effort required to support them
• Frequency of bugs and issues
• Maintenance costs

Then, assess the business impact of each application. Consider how critical each application is to your operations, its impact on customer experience, how it generates revenue, and supports key business processes.

Finally, use this prioritization to build an app modernization strategy and roadmap. This should include:

• Prioritized list of applications to modernize
• Estimated costs and resource requirements
• Timeline for modernization projects
• Risk assessment and mitigation strategies
• Success metrics and expected outcomes

From there, you can plan the projects in your modernization strategy. Remember, a large-scale modernization is not a small task, so take your time setting the strategy to give you the best chance of success.

The 3 Technologies to Help With Your Application Modernization Strategy

Luckily, many organizations have been on the modernization journey for a while. Based on industry experience and best practice, here are the top technologies to look out to help accelerate application modernization.

1. Cloud Computing Platforms: Cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud provide the infrastructure and tools needed to modernize legacy applications. They offer scalability, security, and flexibility that can significantly reduce the complexity of modernization projects. Cloud-native platforms also provide managed services that can replace many custom-built components in legacy systems.
   
2. Containers and Microservices: Technologies like Docker and Kubernetes allow you to break down monolithic applications into smaller, more manageable containers. This approach makes it easier to update individual components without costly refactoring. Microservices architecture enables greater flexibility and easier maintenance, while containers ensure consistent deployment across different environments.
   
3. Low-Code/No-Code Platforms: These platforms can accelerate modernization by allowing rapid development of new features and interfaces. They help business users participate in the application modernization process and can significantly reduce the time and cost of updating legacy applications. Low-code platforms are particularly useful for creating modern user interfaces and automating business processes.

Modernize Legacy Applications With The Help of a Trusted Partner

Application modernization is not just about updating technology – it’s about preparing your business for the future. By taking a strategic approach to modernization and leveraging the right technologies, you can transform your legacy applications into modern, efficient systems that drive business growth and innovation.

But like many things in IT, achieving any type of digital transformation strategy, delivery framework, or modernization is easier when you work alongside experts. An Inetum, our application modernization services include a compelling range of modernization solutions to successfully transition from legacy systems to digital technologies, guaranteeing security, faster time to market, and a positive ROI as a result.