Updated: August 31, 2022
Nowadays almost all businesses depend on applications in one form or another. Those who don’t will hardly survive the competition unfolding in the digital era.
However, simply running an application is not enough to actually succeed. The challenge that many companies are currently facing is that they use legacy applications, which were created for a different world and aren’t of much help for their users now. The flexibility of those apps is so negligible that they can’t integrate with systems of the digital age. And that’s, by the way, exactly what they are supposed to do.
So, ‘what’s the move?’, you may ask. Fortunately, an urgent need for smooth-running, high-performance internal processes can be covered with application modernization.
WHAT IS APPLICATION MODERNIZATION?
In a nutshell, application modernization is the transformation of a legacy app for its better alignment with an organization’s requirements.
There are various options for applications to be modernized – from relatively simple rehosting to complete rebuilding.
Making up your mind on which approach to go with, as well as looking for a reliable vendor takes some time, but it’s definitely worth it. So if you’re still lacking the application modernization initiative and don’t understand why fix something that isn’t broken, check out the reasons we’ve zeroed in on.
WHY INVEST IN APPLICATION MODERNIZATION?
Cutting operational costs
Operational costs optimization is perhaps one of the biggest drivers for modernizing business applications. Today more and more companies are adopting the Software as a Service (SaaS) model because it enables them to centrally host their apps for a subscription. Such an approach tends to be really tempting for many businesses since they get access to a plethora of new features as well as don’t have to carry the burden for keeping applications running 24/7.
Overcoming compatibility issues
Many applications still lean on archaic infrastructures, outdated programming code or operating systems – and sometimes on people who are no longer available to maintain them. Consequently, it requires a lot of resources to make these old-fashioned apps compatible with new technologies, modules, and tools. Another crucial detail that often slips our mind, is that time spares no one. Just like everything else, applications age on a permanent basis. Please, don’t deceive yourself into thinking that at some point your app can’t be “more legacy,” because it can and it surely will. And while applications are inexorably aging, the effort put into converting them to new and more efficient ones is – inevitably – going up along with the cost of that process.
Meeting integration and scalability challenges
Legacy apps are often difficult to change and expand to greater capabilities because of the outdated technology stack or/and overcomplicated inner architecture. A minor update can lead to multiple conflicts across the system. If even one component of an app has load and performance problems, it may become necessary to scale up the entire app only to serve this single component. As long as such a process requires a lot of time and effort from an IT team, needless to say, that adding even the teeny-tiny feature to your app will end up in a huge waste of money. Therefore, your application needs to be capable of handling integrations in a manner that does not break your processes.
Contributing to your employees’ satisfaction.
A good employee is the one who’s satisfied with their job. There’s a bunch of things that contribute to employees’ satisfaction. However, dealing with legacy applications is merely one of them. People don’t want to stay with a business that insists on maintaining the status quo. Instead of working with user-unfriendly technology that doesn’t cover the latest UX/UI standards or device specifics, some employees are more likely to look for better opportunities within other companies. The others, meanwhile, will struggle to use outdated and clumsy applications efficiently, which can significantly slow down the operations.
Making your applications future-ready
Application modernization can become the first step for your company to adopt cloud technology. If you think that to take full advantage of the cloud, it’s enough to simply lift-and-shift your applications there, think again. Legacy applications can only function in the cloud to a certain extent, which eventually results in ever-growing performance problems rather than solutions for your business – problems that your IT team will have to solve instead of focusing on more important errands. Not only will it deprive you of the possibility to access greater functionality at a minimal cost but also fail to meet your employees’ expectations and make them feel frustrated. So before spending tons of money over nothing, it’s better to make your applications cloud-ready in advance and let your business leverage all the possibilities that the cloud environment entails.
Improving decision-making through innovation
Meeting the needs of today’s business is barely possible without using real-time data. Application modernization addresses this issue by installing analytics into the application so that employees can operate with the information or KPIs whenever they need it.
Increasing agility
Business success depends on how fast you can respond to the market challenges and how long it takes you to adopt new technologies. Modernization opens up a number of opportunities for the team to be more efficient. For example, they’ll have access to the system from anywhere, anytime. Furthermore, with a modernized system, you will be able to develop and launch new products quicker than ever before. Scaling and sustaining agility is not just crucial but the only possible way to gain customers’ loyalty and competitive advantage.
Unlocking hidden value
After having been modernized, no-longer-obsolete applications are able to perform adequately within the modern digital ecosystem. You’ll get new opportunities for unlocking value in data analysis and workflow through interactions with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other groundbreaking tools. Whether to leverage them or not is up to you, but isn’t it heartwarming to have an ace up your sleeve?
MAKING ALL THE DIFFERENCE
Since cutting-edge technologies firmly settled in literally every pocket, we’ve had neither a chance nor an option to ignore them, because the moment we do, we’ll be replaced by our more advanced competitors.
Running a business in a usual, ‘orthodox’, the way is far from a great choice. Business applications have to keep pace with the technology changes and easily embrace the latest and greatest features to help run the business in an effective manner.
So why are you waiting?
Get in touch with our experts now to find out more about how modernization can drive your company success.
