The modernization of legacy apps is considered to be an indispensable part of the digital transformation.

The requirements to update the apps are rising each day. In fact, they serve as the catalyst to achieve the strategic goals of the business enterprise. Besides this, they effectively modernize the business to achieve more agility, forward investment and beat the competitive edge.

Application Modernization refers to the technique to take the already present legacy apps, thereby modernizing the internal architecture, platform infrastructure, and features. It primarily emphasizes on-premises and monolithic apps, which are maintained and updated with the waterfall development techniques.

Reason to choose application modernization strategy

The app modernization is useful in bringing an improvement in the new feature delivery velocity with the exposure to the existing app’s functionality through API.

By choosing app modernization, you will be capable of adding the functions, services, and features, which will improve the customer experience, thereby enhancing the business’s bottom line. Thus, it is useful in enhancing the bottom line of the business.

Application modernization strategy steps

Now, we are going to speak about the steps, which are involved in application modernization strategy:

Re-hosting

Also referred to as the lift and shift model, this procedure includes the process of transferring the app’s underlying resources to the cloud from the on-premise data center. The infrastructure gets transferred to the cloud IaaS or infrastructure as a service.

Through it can be implemented without any challenges, the technique is going to leave the specific app bad or good.

Try to move the already present apps, primarily the monolithic legacy apps, upon the cloud infrastructure. You will not be capable of reaping the benefits of the cloud-native features. Some of the drawbacks of the technique are security problems, expensive cloud service costs, reduced time for marketing, more downtime, lesser automation within the CI/CD pipeline, faulty tolerant operations, to name a few.

Refactoring

The app codebase will stay the same in this specific section once it gets migrated upon the IaaS or cloud infrastructure as a service, which includes the network resources, compute, and cloud-based storage.

Hence, the developers will allow you to reuse different investments in the containers, frameworks, and languages, thereby adopting the strategic code of the business entity.

Re- Architecturing

In the specific stage, the legacy monolithic app will be re-architectured, following the microservice model. It includes the division or decomposes of the monolithic app into the services collection, which can be deployed, built, and managed independently. In addition, it includes the decomposition or altering of the apps into different services instead of the complete rebuild.

A few of the primary benefits of this stage include faster time for marketing, enhancing the business agility, decreasing the costs. Besides this, it provides the opportunity to enhance the customer experience. Few of the technologies which are leveraged in this process include serverless, microservices, PaaS, modern, and containerization DevOps practices.

If you want to reap the benefits of the cloud and the apps that offer a competitive and strategic edge for the business enterprise, this technique is considered the most optimum choice.

Among the five R’s, this technique offers a higher value. Through rebuilding, the app needs to be rewritten in the form of cloud-native apps. It is useful in enhancing innovation, releasing the value faster, thereby decreasing the overall costs. Another worth mentioning point is that the efforts necessary to create the legacy app are more than rebuilding it. It provides advancements in framework, languages, technology, and different efficiencies.

Replacing

Once the legacy application includes few useful functionalities, you will be capable of replacing it with the aid of the cloud-based solution. The simple example involves the replacement of the server’s version with cloud-based Microsoft Office 365.

The advantages of such services include execution of the most updated version without requiring updates, improved security, cost savings, and shifting the burden outside the business entities.

Here are some of the aspects you can follow to execute application modernization strategy:

Enlisting the vital apps

It is a prerequisite for the business entity to enlist the high-value assets, thereby analyzing how they will offer benefits to the business enterprise in terms of security, scalability, and performance. Hence, they should jot down the usability, different problem issues, and maintenance costs.

Analysis of the resources

As app modernization is regarded as an organizational and technical change, it is crucial to develop many successful strategies.

Suppose you want to start the business organizational transformation journey. In that case, it is a prerequisite for the business enterprise to recognize the leaders who have the app environment grasp, thereby measuring the change effect at various organizational levels.

Introducing the approach

A bunch of approaches should be taken into account, including the addition of the features, the latest architecture.

In addition, it helps in understanding how it is going to align with the objectives of the potential user. Moreover, it helps in the development and management of different apps.

Measurement of performance improvements

Once the initial modernization phase is completed, it is a prerequisite to track the apps and infrastructure to the code level, assuring the supreme quality of app performance. Apart from this, you should make sure to examine the infrastructure for different errors and problems within the network, database, and cloud. Moreover, the business entity should measure the specific app performance post to seek an understanding of the results.

Process change

To modernize the app infrastructure, you should make sure to adopt careful planning, procure supreme quality practices, and creation of the code so that you can have a better picture.

The app modernization should be tailored to the business enterprise. You can enhance the business’s bottom line without any challenges as you opt for application modernization. As you opt for the strategies mentioned above, you can be ensured that they will increase the business productivity without causing a disturbance in the daily operations.

Feature Image Credit: Veritis