Legacy System Modernization – A Digital Outlook

A Legacy System holds us back!

Yes, organizations, large or small, are caught up with old, complicated legacy applications as their systems are stuck with a technology that is full of innovation yet outdated and unable to integrate, maintain, support, or scale with the new platforms. That said, yet they are crucial for the operation of the business.

An inability or lack of support to meet the growing requirements of the business defines legacy applications, not the age per se. Additionally, changing business needs and customer demands compel a business to leverage new technologies.

It is high time for companies to modernize their old applications to address the challenges of operational efficiency, agility, and customer experience. In fact, as application modernization takes the center stage, a growing concern for failure, compels many CIOs to interrogate the value and validity of the modernization initiatives.

Importance of Legacy Modernization

Legacy modernization is an ongoing process of transforming outdated systems to enhance flexibility, enable cross-platform collaboration, reduce IT costs, complexity and maintain data consistency. It includes challenges with business continuity risks, shortage of experts and high cost of modernization but the key idea behind the legacy application modernization process is to add effective value to the prevailing applications. It converts the system to a high-level modern web platform and integrates various related systems.

 

Most enterprises continue to run their business on legacy applications, weary of the risk and cost involved in replacing these systems. Organizations are prone to face several challenges in an application modernization process.  Primarily, we need to ensure that both systems have got similar functions. Shifting away from the current system can result in operational issues, which may affect the business. Transferring an application from one system to another can be expensive, depending on the complexity and size as well as the amount of business logic, which is built in the application. They have a completely different architecture and cannot be simply ported by running through a conversion program.

Application Modernization Strategy

Once enterprises decide to modernize their legacy applications, a streamlined approach needs to be adopted to ensure better technology performance and avoid business disruption.

Application Assessment

A successful legacy modernization starts with comprehending where the application is and where it wants to lead. This includes: –

The above exercise answers the following: –

 

Which Approach should we choose for Legacy Modernization?

 

It is vital to select an approach that best fits the business needs and delivers results fast.

 

The factors accounting for legacy application reengineering can be related to missing of  non-functional requirements like performance, compliance, security, and supportability.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Strategy

Certain enterprises tend to diverge from the vital attributes and overload the system with new features, in the quest of technology innovation. But with MVP, one can begin system modernization with the features that matter most to the business and its users; it will also filter the product features as per user needs. This involves a unique flow to stimulate views, processes and screens to test the value, validity as well as the necessity of chosen modernization approach. It will ensure our application is on the path to rapid adoption and provide clear metrics for modernization justification and application testing before actual system modernization and global rollout.

Total Reengineering

This approach works best when we require a complete transformation which a legacy system cannot support anymore, i.e., when a new set of functionalities is required. It can be implemented with components replacing technique or a re-architect. It involves building the system from scratch with new technologies, platforms to address the business goals. It can replace the components with pre-integrated suites like CRM, SCM, ERP, to name a few. This will ensure we achieve a product with efficient yet matching competencies, along with better look, performance, modern technologies, and scalable architecture.

Migration

System modernization is crucial for any business and migration is one of the options available in this process. It tends to patch up smaller flaws with new code, process, or application. It ranges from web-enabling, porting legacy software to turnkey migration, new version or even platform. Migration can entail rehosting, redesigning or refactoring for performance optimization and UX updates without affecting the legacy application’s business logic.

However, a proper planning is necessary while migrating from legacy to a modern application as it affects our critical business operation. It needs to ensure a seamless transition with clean data from legacy application to a modern platform. It should avoid data loss, data redundancy as well as security compromise.

Once migration is completed, we can add additional features to the system through custom-built modules or third-party integrations, based on the requirement. It is an indeed an incremental approach as it involves a systematic and step-by-step application modernization process. The good thing about this is, it does not disrupt any other business operations but ensures end-users are more comfortable on modernized application with training and education leading a path for success.

Automated Solutions

An automated solution can apply to certain scenarios and handle a specific part of modernization but needs some manual intervention, such as, Application assessment, Data Migration, Code Migration and Deployment process. They act as a game-changer and make the modernization technically and economically feasible. Automation will ensure we are on the right track and avoid time wastage.

 

In a nutshell, Legacy System Modernization involves both rewards and risks but majorly it frees our business performance and scalability issues, enabling one to append essential business functions quickly.