Top IT strategies to apply to modernize your existing applications
With each passing year, technology and developments in the field are moving at a faster pace. This has led to a never-ending increase in the demands of the customers and a race amongst the clients trying to fulfil such needs. Users today want a rich experience that helps them leverage the advanced possibilities that new technologies can offer. Despite being aware of this, several organisations today use out-dated applications that do not meet the current demands of time. Some examples are a financial system running on an Apple IIGS machine, MS- DOS, Sales terminals running on out-dated Intel computers.
IT decisions makers in many cases also admit to using the out-dated applications even though they are risky in terms of security. While parting with legacy applications is not always an easy decision considering that it requires extensive data transfer, time consumption and lack of skills in addition to lack of awareness of legal compliance requirements, it is important to periodically modernise the organisation’s existing applications.
This approach of modernising the existing applications offers several advantages as follows:
It enables migration to more updated versions of the application and can improve productivity and operation efficiency by using Cloud applications backed by secured systems. With the new era of bringing transparency to management, the new modern application can help organizations to improve operational and management hazards.
It improves the productivity of team members as an updated system would be easier to operate and at the same time would be more supportive to current client and project requirements.
Customer experience can become highly improved as the modernised system would be simpler, faster, more relevant and more efficient.
How then should a firm modernise its existing applications? Before moving from legacy application to a modern one, you need to decide the primary reason for your modernization. Are you looking to modernize your existing legacy application because it may not offer the same value as it used to offer; its maintenance is costly or it cannot sustain the changing technology landscape? What is the primary reason for the thought to modernise. It is imperative and essential for businesses to move out of legacy applications and infrastructure to modern cloud based, serverless architecture which gives scalability & robustness to businesses.
Modernization Strategy: Firms should plan their modernization strategy by analyzing areas they are looking to modernize and allocate a budget for the same. Areas like IT systems, System Architecture, Information Workflow, Interlinking of Departments, Manual processes, Operational bottlenecks, etc.
Ways to modernize Lift and shift – In this method, the application and all the information in it is migrated to cloud without having to redesign the application itself. With this approach, we can have more open and extendable architecture through the cloud. This also leads to increased performance and reduced costs.
Enhancing Existing applications: Improving existing applications and making them adaptable to change drivers of users expectations who are expecting a seamless experience for web applications across different platforms. Users demand for rich, interactive experiences with low latency have led to new frameworks on the web like angular, react & Vue.
Reengineering Applications: Modern Applications built with the cloud-native approach in containerized platforms empowers organizations to build and run scalable applications. These applications are loosely coupled, robust and powerful to meet the new demands of scale. With modernized architecture businesses can take advantages of speed, continuity these applications can deliver in different environments such as public, private and hybrid clouds.
It is useful to keep some criteria in mind while selecting the best approach for modernization. You need to understand which problem you are solving with modernization. Are you trying to solve a business problem, a user problem or a technical problem? Your decision of modernization should be done based on the problems you are trying to solve with legacy applications and then move ahead with building your application modernization strategy.
We would recommend you to conduct a thorough assessment of your legacy applications and contact experienced service providers that can help you with this important digital transformation process. Not to mention, iView Labs is just a call away to help! Share your requirements on sales@iviewlabs.com.