Application modernization along with migration services plays a major role in accelerating the digital transformation journey for an enterprise. While an increasing number of companies are adopting IaaS and SaaS and building cloud-native digital capabilities, few have made true advances in application modernization. A recent Gartner study estimates nearly 90% of enterprise applications to be ignored in terms of sufficient modernization investment. Most enterprises attribute this to the consequential communications breakdown.
Tech-savvy professionals already know the major reasons that compel legacy modernization, however they lack the analytics & presentation tools and/or the skills essential to convey vital business reasons for transformation. Business leaders are in the dire need to interpret the data required for making a modernization decision if they have to avoid the accumulation of technical debts and business paralysis. Organizations need to segregate the work in stages for their modernization plans and target critical business capabilities.
A Successful Application Modernization Strategy Rests on Four Pillars
These pillars are:
- The Challenge: The accumulated technical debt must be explained in the way to prompt business leaders to take action.
- Analysis of Cost Benefits: A successful application modernization proposal clearly defines its potential influence on the business at the time of development. It does this by using relevant business metrics and involving specific processes & applications. This further includes a generic, automated analysis at the code level.
- Migration of Technology: New applications can never contribute to business success when development cycles are kept short, which further needs technology migration to resolve the issue.
- Process Illustration: Decision-makers are more likely to approve a prioritized, multi-platform, and multi-year program, which also comprises a magnified view of the contemporary status quo of their business.
According to Gartner, it is vital for businesses to assess and measure the influence of their current technical debt, along with the cost, complexity, and risk of the modernization effort.
How Enterprises Must Approach to Address Technical Debt?
Several enterprises liken technical debt to an undesirable condition, not realizing that this debt is not bad in itself. As speed-to-value is crucially imperative for digital businesses, IT teams intentionally take planned shortcuts to complete tasks as responsibly and quickly as possible. Planned debt, blind debt, mirage debt, dead debt, and acquired debt are five major areas that businesses must focus on for managing the technical debt in the digital transformation environment.
Enterprises that are driven by processes instead of innovation and fearful of risking a short-term technical debt are highly likely to haggle in the digital world. It is necessary that businesses commence by understanding that the modernization of system components is what matters. They must, therefore, identify components that fulfill future digital demand and have the potential to cause errors.
The Value of Application Modernization to Businesses
The application modernization ecosystem has seen an upsurge in the recent past, with cloud technology giants rolling out more optimal solutions. Leading cloud providers recognize the complications of legacy modernization and cruciality of selecting the right technology platform that is specific to key business requirements.
Most organizations with their legacy systems spend a major portion of their development resources for maintaining the existing applications, which leaves lesser resources for innovation. This has caused a gradual upsurge in the adoption of legacy modernization, which would help them reduce the maintenance cost, which further leads to greater investment in innovation-driven approaches.
Most enterprises are investing in application modernization for developing the agility to align IT investments well with their business imperatives. Organizations that understand the importance of the move toward modernization is vital to maximize the value of their business will remain at the forefront of the competition.
Migration of Technology in Application Modernization
Technology migration remains one of the key pillars of the application modernization process, considered as the easiest way for ensuring that the business requirements are met efficiently. The process presupposes system migration along with some minor enhancements, which typically involves the leverage of cloud solutions.
Drawing a head-on correlation between transitioning from legacy system and modernization, as well as contemplating benefits to an organization as a whole is important, given the cost involved. Organizations must keep a track of how current business processes are no longer sustainable and how technology has advanced over the years. It is crucial that enterprises can perceive how the proposed transformation will bring added capabilities to their product and help them evolve without significant development cycles.
The Importance of Process Illustration
The project description is needed to be transparent, as the board in any business will reject the proposal altogether. A common mistake seen among the IT modernization proposals is the impetus to modernize all the applications immediately. The board must instead be offered with a multi-stage and prioritized program design for increasing the chances of acceptance and implementation. The design must also comprise the types and number of applications or databases, and the amount of resources needed for completing the transition effectively.
To Sum Up
Effective application modernization for a successful digital transformation involves the blend of the right technology, the right people, and careful planning. The prime focus area of CTOs must be to maintain a proper balance between such elements, assess the current inventory and map out the priorities. Businesses must initially bank on the non-invasive approaches to realize greater ROI in a shorter time period. This will further help them obtain stakeholder buy-in to see more complex transformations.