Navigating the Modernisation Maze: Developing an Effective Application Strategy

Why Application Modernisation?

Legacy applications can act as roadblocks to business agility and innovation, with 90 per cent of businesses held back by these old systems. They often lack scalability, hinder user experience, and drain resources due to high maintenance costs.

What's more, 48 per cent of employees in the UK waste at least three hours each day working with inefficient systems.

By embracing application modernisation, you unlock a plethora of benefits, including enhanced scalability, improved user experience, cost savings, and the ability to leverage modern technologies to stay ahead of the curve.

Assessing Your Application Portfolio

The first step in crafting a successful application modernisation strategy is assessing your existing portfolio.

Conduct a comprehensive inventory, identifying the applications that drive the most value for your business and those burdened with technical debt. This evaluation will help you prioritise your modernisation efforts and determine each application's best course of action.

Defining Your Application Modernisation Strategy

You must define clear objectives and goals to steer your modernisation journey in the right direction. Identify what you want to achieve through modernisation, whether it's improving performance, reducing costs, or enhancing user satisfaction. With a well-defined strategy, you can align your efforts, secure stakeholder buy-in, and track progress effectively.

Choosing the Right Modernisation Approach

There are various approaches to modernising applications, and selecting the right one is crucial. Common options include:

• Rehosting: Also known as 'lift and shift', rehosting involves migrating the application as is to a new infrastructure or platform without making significant changes to its architecture. It provides quick migration with minimal modifications, offering benefits such as improved hardware performance or cost savings.
• Rearchitecting: This approach involves redesigning the application's architecture to leverage modern technologies and capabilities. It may include breaking down monolithic applications into microservices, adopting cloud-native architectures, or using modern frameworks. Rearchitecting aims to improve scalability, flexibility, and maintainability.
• Refactoring: Refactoring focuses on improving the internal structure and codebase of the application without altering its functionality. It involves making code-level changes, optimising algorithms, enhancing code quality, and adopting best practices. Refactoring improves the application's maintainability, performance, and extensibility.
• Replacing: In some cases, replacing the legacy application entirely with a new off-the-shelf software solution or a custom-built application may be more practical. This option allows you to leverage modern technologies, features, and industry best practices.
• Re-engineering: Re-engineering services involve the transformation of an existing application by reimagining its structure, design, and functionality. This approach goes beyond simple modifications and aims to enhance the application's overall value and performance. It may include components of rearchitecting, refactoring, and replacing to modernise the application effectively. Re-engineering focuses on optimising the application's codebase, improving its user experience, and aligning it with modern business needs.

These modernisation options offer different levels of complexity, cost, and impact on the existing application. The choice depends on the application's current state, business goals, available resources, and desired outcomes.

In addition, consider how you might leverage the cloud. The cloud offers immense potential for application modernisation, and migrating applications to the cloud can bring scalability, agility, and cost-efficiency.

Evaluate the benefits of various cloud models and providers, considering scalability, security, and cost optimisation. Using cloud technologies strategically can supercharge your modernisation efforts.

Mitigating Risks and Ensuring Successful Modernisation

No modernisation journey is without risks. To mitigate potential pitfalls:

• Create a robust migration plan that encompasses a detailed timeline, clear milestones, and allocated resources to ensure a smooth transition.
• Consider conducting pilot tests or phased rollouts to minimise risks and validate the effectiveness of your migration plan before full-scale implementation.
• Test thoroughly, establish rollback strategies, and seek user acceptance to minimise disruption.
• Address critical concerns like data migration, integration challenges, and security vulnerabilities proactively.