Application modernization is the process of updating existing software applications to align with current business needs, technology standards, and customer expectations. Often referred to as “digital transformation” for legacy systems, it involves reengineering applications to enhance performance, security, flexibility, and scalability, making them adaptable to today’s digital-first landscape.
While historically valuable, legacy systems can become burdensome due to outdated technology, limited functionality, and burgeoning maintenance costs. Application modernization addresses these limitations by evolving these systems, enabling organizations to take advantage of modern infrastructure, cloud computing, agile development practices, and innovative technologies like AI and machine learning.
Legacy applications often support core business operations, making it challenging to replace or retire them. However, as business requirements evolve, maintaining these outdated systems becomes increasingly difficult and costly. Modernizing applications can resolve these issues and add additional functionalities that the business needs today. Some important benefits of modernizing applications include
Legacy systems require specialized skills, which are often hard to find and expensive. Modernizing applications reduces these dependencies, cutting down operational expenses.
Legacy systems can lack the flexibility to quickly adapt to changing business needs. Modernized applications, especially those built on agile frameworks, enable faster iterations and more responsiveness.
Outdated applications often struggle to meet modern customer expectations such as seamless mobile access and intuitive interfaces. Modernization ensures applications are user-friendly and accessible, improving overall customer experience.
Legacy systems frequently lack up-to-date security protocols, making them susceptible to cyber threats. Modernized applications are equipped with contemporary security standards, providing greater protection for sensitive business data.
Modern applications integrate better with data analytics tools, enabling organizations to leverage data for business insights and decision-making.
These are some key benefits that application modernization delivers. But how do enterprises dive into application modernization? Let’s dive into popular approaches to application modernization.
Application modernization can take multiple forms, depending on your business requirements and technical constraints. Some applications are much easier to modernize than others depending on factors like the popularity of the platform, code quality, and so on. That said, most enterprises adopt one of the following approaches to modernization.
Rehosting involves moving an application to a different environment with minimal changes, often from on-premises servers to a cloud-based platform. This approach is the quickest and least resource-intensive, but it doesn’t fully optimize the application for cloud-native functionality. Rehosting is a good choice for organizations looking for a fast, cost-effective solution that offers some immediate benefits, like scalability and reduced maintenance.
Refactoring, also known as “rearchitecting,” involves modifying an application’s codebase to make it cloud-native or to leverage modern architectural patterns. It’s more complex than rehosting, as it requires revisiting the application’s structure, but it enables better performance, scalability, and flexibility. Refactoring may include breaking down a monolithic application into microservices, allowing components to be independently deployed and scaled.
Replatforming is a middle ground between rehosting and refactoring, involving some code changes to make an application work better in a new environment. Often, this means moving applications to a new platform with minor optimizations to enhance performance and scalability. Replatforming can make applications cloud-compatible without requiring a full overhaul, offering a balance of cost and benefit.
Rebuilding involves developing an application from scratch using modern technologies and architectures. This approach provides a fresh start, enabling the creation of a fully optimized application aligned with current business needs and technological standards. While resource-intensive, rebuilding is often the best choice when an application is outdated, lacks flexibility, or is too costly to maintain.
Sometimes, modernizing an application isn’t feasible due to its age, complexity, or lack of relevance to current business processes. In such cases, organizations may choose to replace it with a new, off-the-shelf solution that fulfills the same function. This approach provides the benefits of modern technology but requires an organization to adapt its processes to the new application.
Numerous tools and technologies support application modernization efforts, enhancing everything from automation to security. Some commonly used technologies in application modernization today are
Cloud platforms provide a flexible, scalable environment for rehosting, re-platforming, and refactoring applications. With services like Kubernetes and serverless computing, cloud platforms support containerization, microservices, and automated scaling.
Microservices architecture enables applications to be broken down into loosely coupled, independently deployable services. This structure improves scalability, resilience, and flexibility, allowing different teams to work on different services without affecting the entire application.
Containerization isolates applications and their dependencies, making it easier to move them across environments without compatibility issues. Containers allow for faster deployment and simplify the management of complex, multi-component applications.
DevOps practices and Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines facilitate a smooth development-to-deployment workflow, ensuring frequent and reliable releases. Adopting these approaches also ensures that business continues as usual while application modernization is in progress.
Modernized applications often leverage APIs to integrate with other services and systems. APIs allow applications to communicate and share data, enabling organizations to build a connected ecosystem that supports data analytics and decision-making.
AI and ML can add advanced capabilities to modernized applications, such as predictive analytics, customer behavior analysis, and intelligent automation. These technologies enhance decision-making and provide a competitive advantage in customer engagement and process automation.
Application modernization is a cost-effective approach that helps businesses exploit the latest in technology while reusing as much functionality of the legacy platform as possible. By updating legacy applications to modern standards, businesses can reduce costs, improve efficiency, and better serve customers.
We’ve modernized scores of business applications enabling our clients to stay competitive in today’s markets. Check out our work on our portfolio page. Grab a free application modernization services consultation on our contact page.
ClouDesign Your Digital Ecosystems to Drive Peak Organizational Performance
Send us an email at
sales@cloudesign.com
Talk to Us
#70, 7th Cross, 16 B Main, 4th B Block, Near Koramangala B.D.A Complex, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560034
Crystal Palace, Chandivali Farm Road, Near Ram Baugh Andheri(E), NA, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400072
+91-8689998893
