In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, application modernisation has become a critical imperative for businesses striving to stay competitive and meet the ever-growing demands of their customers.
However, developing an effective application modernisation strategy can be akin to navigating a complex maze, with numerous challenges and considerations to tackle.
This article will guide you through that maze, providing actionable insights and valuable tips to help you develop a robust application modernisation strategy that drives success.
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.
Implementing Agile Development and DevOps Practices
To enhance speed, collaboration, and quality in the modernisation process, embracing agile methodologies and fostering a DevOps culture is crucial. Adopting these practices allows you to streamline your application modernisation efforts and ensure successful outcomes.
Here's how you can leverage Agile and DevOps practices:
Adopt Iterative Development:
- Break down your modernisation project into smaller, manageable iterations or sprints.
- Prioritise features and functionalities to deliver incremental value with each iteration.
- Continuously gather feedback from stakeholders and end users to drive iterative improvements.
Embrace Continuous Integration (CI):
- Implement CI practices to integrate code changes frequently and automatically.
- Automate build, testing, and code analysis processes to identify issues early in the development cycle.
- Ensure a consistent codebase by enforcing coding standards and conducting code reviews.
Implement Continuous Delivery (CD):
- Enable a streamlined and automated release process through CD practices.
- Automate deployment pipelines to package, test, and deploy application changes efficiently.
- Ensure consistent environments across development, testing, and production stages.
Leverage Automation:
- Utilise automation tools and frameworks to streamline repetitive tasks and reduce manual effort.
- Automate testing processes, including unit, integration, and regression tests.
- Implement infrastructure as code (IaC) to provision and manage development and deployment environments.
Establish Collaborative Culture:
- Foster a collaborative DevOps culture that encourages cross-functional collaboration.
- Promote effective communication and knowledge sharing between development, operations, and other teams.
- Encourage the use of collaborative tools and platforms to facilitate seamless collaboration and information exchange.
Monitor and Measure:
- Implement monitoring and logging solutions to gain real-time insights into application performance.
- Continuously monitor key metrics and indicators to identify bottlenecks and areas for optimisation.
- Use feedback and data-driven insights to drive continuous improvement in your modernisation efforts.
Maximising Value through Application Re-engineering Services
Partnering with trusted providers like ELEKS can streamline and accelerate your modernisation process.
Our application re-engineering services offer expertise in revitalising legacy applications, optimising their performance, and aligning them with modern business needs.
Ready to Start the Modernisation Process?
Developing an effective application modernisation strategy is a complex endeavour, but with the right approach, it can drive significant value for your business.
You can successfully navigate the modernisation maze by understanding the need for modernisation, assessing your application portfolio, choosing the right approach, mitigating risks, leveraging cloud technologies, and embracing best practices.
And if you want to squeeze maximum value out of this undertaking, partner with the experts at ELEKS. We can further enhance your modernisation journey and drive your business towards a future of innovation and growth. Get in touch today.
So, don't let your applications remain stagnant—take action and create an application modernisation strategy that will lead you to success.
