Application modernization is the act of updating old and legacy software applications to utilize the current technologies, grids, and architectural patterns. With technology continuing to evolve quickly, organizations have to get their hand on modernizing their applications, or they are going to lag behind the competitors in utilizing newer and better applications.
This article will explain what application modernization is, why this is important, the application modernization process, approaches and techniques, what challenges the companies face and modernization best practices.
What is Application Modernization?
Application modernization is all about upgrading or refactoring existing business applications to embrace modern methodologies, technologies, frameworks, and cloud platforms. The aim of application modernization services is to make an application faster, more scaled, secure, maintainable, and user-friendly.
Legacy applications are older software that can use an outdated programming language, an obsolete database, and legacy systems. Typically, these applications generally run on old infrastructure that can be cumbersome, insecure, high-cost, and slow to maintain over time.
Modernizing legacy applications delivers many benefits:
- Improves application performance and scalability using cloud-native tech
- Reduces technical debt and total cost of ownership
- Enhances agility, efficiency and productivity of developers
- Secures applications and data better against modern cyber threats
- Provides better user experience and capabilities
- Positions organizations for digital transformation and innovation
Approaches to Application Modernization
There are several approaches organizations can take to modernize applications:
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Lift and Shift
This fast and minimally invasive approach “lifts” an application from legacy infrastructure “as-is” and “shifts” it to a cloud platform like AWS, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure. This provides basic modernization benefits like reduced data center costs and better scale, security and reliability. However, the application architecture itself has not been updated.
Replatforming
Also known as “rip and replace”, this approach re-platforms an application by rewriting parts of its logic, utilizing cloud services, and replacing obsolete components while preserving most of the original codebase. This allows the application to benefit from cloud elasticity, managed services and modern frameworks.
Refactoring / Rearchitecting
This is an architecture and codebase restructuring approach of applying modern modular and cloud-native patterns in writing an application while retaining its existing functionality. Taking the monolith approach to an application, wherein a developer rolls out all changes at once and then breaks monolithic apps into independently deployable microservices and creates data models that are more optimal for scaling and developers – will make the app more resilient, scalable and friendly to work on.
Rebuilding from Scratch
A “greenfield” modernization approach where legacy applications are completely rebuilt natively on the cloud, using the latest technologies, frameworks and architectural styles like serverless, microservices, APIs and DevOps. This enables full benefits of the cloud and rapid delivery of new features, albeit with the highest initial effort.
The Importance of Application Modernization
Modernizing business applications is no longer an option but an imperative for organizations today. Here are the key drivers:
Lower Costs
Migrating legacy systems from expensive on-prem data centers to cloud infrastructure significantly reduces hosting and operational costs. Serverless computing drives further efficiency.
Improved Agility
Monolithic legacy apps are complex and rigid. Microservices architecture, CI/CD pipelines and cloud-native development help accelerate feature delivery.
Enhanced Productivity
Modern application stacks eliminate the tedious maintenance of legacy systems. Developers are empowered to build features faster.
Better Customer Experiences
Modern apps use the latest technologies, such as AI/ML, big data analytics and IoT, to deliver personalized, omnichannel experiences that customers demand.
Increased Revenue
Feature velocity and customer experience improvements unlocked by modernization translate directly into top-line growth.
Future-Proofing
Modernized cloud-native applications provide long-term viability and evolution as technology requirements change.
With ROI on modernization investments seen in months, not pursuing app modernization puts organizations at an enormously competitive and growth disadvantage.
Key Challenges with Application Modernization
However, migrating business-critical legacy systems to modern cloud platforms can be highly complex. Organizations face several key challenges:
Legacy Technical Debt
Most legacy systems weren’t built for the cloud scale, security and velocity challenges of today. Therefore, a lot of technical debt must be addressed.
Integration Spaghetti
Legacy apps have complex integration dependencies, and data flows that impede migration velocity without causing disruptions.
Skills Gap
Unfortunately, most developer teams do not have experience with building cloud-native, microservices-based systems that are required for modernization.
No Test Environments
Test modernization changes for complex legacy apps are impossible in realistic staging environments that resemble production.
Zero Downtime Mandate
The business-critical apps can’t be taken offline without immediately affecting customers and partners. Zero-downtime migration is paramount.
Compliance Risks
Regulated industries like healthcare, banking and insurance require rigorous compliance checks before changes roll out to production.
Cultural Resistance
After years of status quo, convincing teams to embrace cloud-first, DevOps-oriented IT delivery requires cultural shifts.
Given these barriers, specialized expertise is essential for organizations to modernize complex, mission-critical applications successfully.
Key Pillars of Application Modernization Best Practices
While each legacy modernization journey is unique, these best practices help guide organizations to success:
- Cloud-Native First Mindset. Take a cloud-first approach across architecture, design, testing, security and operations. Build on managed cloud services versus legacy practices.
- Prioritize Quick Wins. Focus initial modernization on easier lifts like UI facelifts before pursuing complex migrations that deliver transformative business outcomes over longer timeframes.
- Architect for Change. Deliver applications for a customer, such as microservices, serverless, and APIs. This approach, fortunately, limits future tech debt and allows for faster capability iteration.
- Adopt DevOps Culture. Empower industries and teams to build a common DevOps awareness and collaborative alignment of DevOps principles quickly and iteratively.
- Automate Everything. To increase the productivity of developers and prevent the configuration drift from one environment to another, mandatory automation of manual tasks is needed.
- Institute Security Best Practices. As the attack surfaces grow, the modernization blueprint and toolchain should bake the capabilities for the bake cloud security.
- Validate Continuously. Continuously test across real-world positive and negative scenarios to ensure changes deliver expected value without regression or risks.
- Take Ownership of Data. Ingest data from legacy systems into cloud data platforms to unlock analytics, AI/ML and other innovation opportunities.
- Keep Users in Mind. Focus on how modernization enables users and customers to do more and more to drive adoption and outcome.
- Modernization is Continuous. View modernization as an ongoing initiative, not a one-time project, to continually innovate on legacy and modern application portfolios over time.
By following these best practices, organizations can overcome modernization barriers, accelerate legacy migrations and deliver continuous innovation across application portfolios.
Modernization Techniques and Key Considerations
There are also several granular application modernization techniques, patterns, and frameworks that IT leaders should consider beyond overall approaches and best practices.
Rehosting (Lift and Shift)
Migrating an application from legacy infrastructure (data centers and virtual machines) to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) on public cloud platforms (AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure) is also known as rehosting or ‘lift and shift’.
Benefits:
- Quickly realize cost efficiencies of cloud infrastructure
- Leverage managed services for databases, security, monitoring
- Keep application architecture unchanged
Use When:
- Quickly reducing data center footprint is the priority
- The application doesn’t require architectural changes
- The process allows gradual modernization after the initial lift and shift
Refactoring (Re-architecting)
Refactoring transforms legacy application architecture using modern design patterns without changing existing code functionality. This typically involves:
- Decomposing monolithic apps into independently scalable and deployable microservices
- Optimizing data models and migrating data to cloud-native databases or data platforms
- Moving business logic processing into functions-as-a-service on serverless platforms
- Implementing APIs and event streaming to integrate decoupled services
- Containerization for simplified deployment automation
Benefits:
- More agile, resilient and scalable architecture
- Accelerates feature delivery
- Reduces costs from increased utilization efficiency
Use When:
- Monolithic app constraints limit business agility and innovation
- Piecemeal migration to the microservices model is preferred over the Big Bang rewrite
Replatforming (Rip and Replace)
Replatforming selectively rewrites parts of an application by replacing outdated programming languages, frameworks, databases and other components with modern cloud-native equivalents:
- Java and .NET Framework to Java EE and .NET Core
- Relational databases to cloud-hosted PostgreSQL, MySQL or managed services
- Monolith code to cloud functions and container-based microservices
- Angular and React replace legacy UI frameworks
- Integrate cloud platform services like messaging, notifications and file storage
Benefits:
- Modern dev stack improves developer experience and productivity
- Better leverage of cloud elasticity and managed services
- Gradual evolution towards cloud-native architecture
Use When:
- Selective modernization of parts of the app is preferable over whole rewrite
- Transitioning to cloud-native technologies and platforms
Wholesale Rebuild (Greenfield)
A complete rewrite of legacy applications using the latest programming languages, frameworks, cloud infrastructure and microservices patterns. Key steps:
- Reverse engineering legacy apps into functional and technical specifications
- Rebuilding natively on cloud platforms from scratch
- Using cloud-native languages (Node.js, Python), UI frameworks (React, Angular)
- Microservices and serverless architectures, APIs, containers and orchestration
- DevOps automation toolchain with CI/CD pipeline
Benefits:
- Future-proof, sustainable architecture
- Unconstrained innovation and rapid feature development
- Ultimate technical debt elimination
Use When:
- The current app architecture is unviable for the required velocity and scale
- The business context demands disruptive new capabilities and experiences
- Technical debt and legacy constraints dominate current investments
As seen above, organizations have several approaches through which legacy applications can be modernized to cloud-native architectures. The best approach depends on multiple factors:
- Migration constraints – time, budget, downtime allowance, compliance risks
- Business priorities – agility, innovation, TCO reduction
- Legacy architecture complexity – monolith vs. distributed functions
- Modernization skillsets within teams
- Ability to fund potential switchover or staging environments
Assessing these facets can help IT leaders determine the most feasible pathways to balancing modernization goals with reality.
Expert Managed Services for Application Modernization
The majority of organizations find it difficult to modernize business-critical legacy applications without external help. But, oftentimes, trying to rapidly reskill whole teams on new cloud-native skills before plunging into new risky mission-critical migrations has been the killer.
Reliable options to bridge competency gaps are provided by specialized managed service providers. These services have deep expertise to optimize all facets of application modernization to accelerate modernization initiatives of organizations:
Legacy Migration Assessment
Experts start by methodically evaluating target legacy environments and applications across multiple dimensions:
- Business functionality and technical specifications
- Interdependencies and data flows
- Performance, scalability and security posture
- Cloud readiness gaps and migration feasibility
This assessment yields actionable insights into modernization complexity, recommended pathways, timelines and costs.
Actionable Cloud Migration Roadmaps
Next, managed service experts outline detailed roadmaps to transform legacy applications into modern cloud-native architectures leveraging various techniques like replatforming, refactoring into microservices or rebuilding from scratch.
These plans outline exact incremental steps to migrate different application components methodically, mitigate risks and validate outcomes. The roadmaps integrate directly with internal teams’ build and release processes.
On-Demand Cloud Platform Expertise
Modernizing legacy apps requires a specialist skill set involving cloud infrastructure, data, security, DevOps tooling and automation. Managed platform experts augment internal teams with the specialized skills needed on the modernization journey.
These technical specialists are responsible for making sure that architectural designs, cloud migrations, integrations, testing and cutovers are executed as painlessly as possible at the enterprise scale.
Managed Migration Execution
End-to-end migration execution support is essential for a smooth transition of business-critical applications to modern cloud environments, even as internal teams skill up. Technical specialists take over all or parts of cloud migration heavy lifting:
- Cloud infrastructure provisioning and configuration
- Code refactoring, replatforming, containerization
- Database and data pipeline migration
- API and microservices development
- DevOps release automation setup
- Security controls and compliance integration
- Migration cutover and validation testing
Giving the consumer a quick way to move faster with minimum disruption or risk are managed services using proven methodologies and cloud expertise.
Key Takeaways
What is now an urgent requirement is legacy modernization. Successful transformation of portfolios is possible by organizations following structured, native cloud strategies. Managed modernization services consume this transition by filling the cloud skill gap.
If approached right, the companies can create new and innovative experiences, unlock new efficiencies using the right people and technology, and then prepare a solid technology foundation for the future. Application modernization is now becoming an imperative task.
