In today’s digital world, businesses that run on age-old legacy applications find it difficult to adapt to modern technology solutions, let alone emerging ones. The business landscape that we witness today is, of course, dissimilar to the one we were comfortable with five years back—and the trend is not slowing. The arrival of the latest technologies has driven enterprises to upgrade their business models and think seriously about the future.
The enhancement to business models continues to focus even harder on the modernization of legacy applications. In many cases, legacy apps have become a severe hindrance for businesses, not just a speed bump. Operational models are being revamped: enterprises want their business-critical applications to be more agile, scalable, and free of operational disruptions.
What is Legacy App Modernization?
Legacy app modernization is the process of upgrading an enterprise’s existing business framework with more modern and agile solutions that are scalable, highly available, and secure. Application modernization refers to reengineering existing business applications in order to support the growing digital needs. Upgrading your aging applications with new architecture and features provides them with a new lease on life, prevents them from becoming obsolete, and creates compelling business value.
Why do Businesses Refrain from Modernizing their Outdated Legacy Applications?
Moving from the comfort of the “known and adequate” to the promise of efficiency, scalability, and high productivity can be daunting to many managers. What will its cost? How long will it take? Do we have the staffing resources to make it happen? The following are a few perceived impediments to modernization.
Modernizing cost and project duration will be high
Every organization’s pain point and project manager’s nightmare is a budget overrun. The fear of overspending when retiring the current system in favor of a new platform and incurring various up-front costs that may or may not be justified is real. However, it is also #Myth1. Cost is not an app modernization challenge; the cloud is the biggest money saver to happen to IT. And all other costs of modernizing pay for themselves through gained efficiencies, expanded customer reach, and application interoperability.
Compatibility of legacy systems with new systems cannot work smoothly
For organizations that have a large legacy footprint, app modernization is a daunting task. App modernization, in this case, will justifiably be more complex and needs to be carefully managed. During the modernization process, my entire business process may come to a standstill! This is #Myth2. App modernization processes can be broken down into simple stages that can handle several apps at a time. Business continuity is at the core of all app modernization techniques.
Integrating on-premises and cloud infrastructure will be highly disruptive
When organizations decide to modernize, they do not want to abandon their existing software and applications built and deployed on their on-premises infrastructure. However, having some apps in the cloud while retaining some apps on-premises may induce inefficiencies and operational silos. This is Myth #3. The fact is, on-premises and cloud apps can tenant together and stay integrated to provide you a complete 360-degree view of the business.
Managing change—our workforce cannot adapt
Legacy systems are generally decades old. Finding a workforce that has built or worked in that application is hard or impossible to find. Since the system is outdated, it leaves us without information or the required skills to migrate the data from the legacy system. The complexity of migrating our legacy systems to a new, modern platform is beyond our capability. We could run the risk of crucial data loss if the modernization fails. This is Myth #4.
How to efficiently address app modernization challenges?
The better you understand the legacy systems, the easier your legacy app modernization process shall be. Businesses need to clearly understand the modernization requirements upfront to forecast the possible challenges and take appropriate measures to tackle them. To determine the right modernization strategy and devise risk mitigation plans, businesses must have a well-defined modernization roadmap to counter the modernization bottlenecks.
Innovate with PreludeSys
We transform your legacy apps into intelligent business solutions!
At PreludeSys, we don’t just modernize your age-old legacy applications; instead, we innovate. We are a trusted Microsoft Gold Partner with more than two decades of experience updating legacy applications for our clients across various portfolios. We’ve helped our clients achieve success in their modernization journeys using the most reliable Microsoft Azure solutions.
Revamp your operational model and move your business-critical legacy systems to the cloud for better performance. Choose the best-fit modernization approach and improve the agility and scalability of your legacy systems.
Want to know more about our modernization solutions? Our experts are always available to guide you.
