Application Modernization

By Group 6:-
Apoorva Panigrahi (2021EXEMBA40)
Avishek Panigrahi (2021EXEMBA14)
Jaswasi Samantray (2021EXEMBA48)
Samujjal Barooah (2021EXEMBA02)
 Introduction- The Legacy Conundrum
• The legacy application is “an information system that may be based on outdated technologies but is critical to
day-to-day operations.” IT companies that depend on legacy applications often encounter hurdles like
incompatibility, undesired maintenance costs, and a scarcity of legacy coders. This ails organizations in their
abilities to effectively achieve complete digital transformation. Legacy apps are hard to integrate with modern
technologies like AI, IoT, and Cloud.

• The statistical insights indicate:

 90% of businesses are impeded from harnessing the full potential of digital technologies due to their reliance
on legacy applications
 65% of businesses believe that legacy systems are incapable of addressing the emerging requirements of the
digital business
 88% of IT leaders agree that modernized IT systems are critical to meet emerging digital business demands
 80% believe that not modernizing IT systems will negatively impact the long-term growth of their organization

• As businesses begin to grow and expand, the need for custom software that is able to add additional
functionality and flexibility also grows. Growth and expansion could be slowed down considerably for those who
still use legacy systems and software, due to the lack of the ability to integrate with new systems and add new
functionality. With application modernization, businesses are able to update old software in order to utilize
custom and modern capabilities and features.
 Application modernization benefits
Application modernization a.k.a.
Business modernization is the • Competitive edge
transition of existing applications to
new approaches on the cloud, helping
• Enhanced compatibility
you achieve the following business
outcomes: Speed to market, Rapid
innovation, Flexibility, Cost savings • Cloud-native

In other words, • Better efficiencies

Application modernization services • Robust security

provide businesses with the ability to
create new features and services that
• Improved user satisfaction
better align with their business’s
current state and future goals. These
new features can be personalized for • Staying relevant
the business to ensure that the legacy
application continues to provide value. • Productivity boost
 Why modernize legacy applications?
• As the business world continually globalizes, IT agility and experience-centricity carry the immense
potential to help organizations invent new models and expand their market presence.

• In the post-COVID world, businesses need superior digital enablement to ensure continuity, customer
satisfaction, and competitive edge.

• Historically, organizations have modernized heritage applications to unlock trapped value while
freeing up capital to invest in innovation and growth. As such, these principles address perpetual
issues of the IT application landscape, including:

 Delayed, infrequent, and error-prone production releases result in lost opportunities.

 Duplicate and redundant environments are leading to suboptimal utilization of resources.
 Messy, inflexible, and technology-debt-ridden heritage software with inherent design issues
leading to maintenance nightmares, including high overhead.
 Major Challenges
• Manage the schedule and cost
• Adopt new ways of working
• Improve user adoption and customer satisfaction
• Deliver business value and ROI
• Retain and enhance the brand value
Despite these challenges, application modernization remains a key element of an organization’s digital
journey. Technologies such as cloud, microservices, IoT, blockchain, artificial intelligence/machine
learning (AI/ML), and robotic process automation (RPA) enable modern, hyper-connected enterprises
to be more efficient, flexible, scalable, and connected, controlled, secure and transparent.
Understanding and adhering to application modernization principles is essential for businesses to
remain relevant in these uncertain and dynamic times.
 The three pillars of app modernization
• Architecture transformation: App modernization begins with a technical change, with organizations shifting from three-tier,
tightly coupled, hard-to-change monoliths to a modern, agile, and loosely coupled microservices-enabled landscape that enables
greater flexibility and agility. The journey starts with having the right architectural framework that incorporates industrialized
design patterns and implements best practices focused on simplifying application development and maintenance cycles. It includes
domain-driven design, the de facto architecture pattern for cloud-native architecture, that breaks up complex business domains
and monolithic applications into smaller data-driven microservices and helps define clear boundaries for each context.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3XufmvEMiM
• Organizational structure transformation: To support the modernized architecture, silos across development, quality assurance,
testing, and the business need to be broken down and replaced with self-sustaining domain-driven teams. Whereas in traditional
development approaches there are separate resources to support development, infrastructure, and quality assurance with large
teams of 30 or 60 people per project, in a modern approach the same resources need to be responsible for the development,
platform operations, and automation scripting.

For example,

In Capgemini’s Product-Oriented Development (POD) as a Service model, a single team of cross-skilled people works closely
together across all aspects of maintenance and development to ensure optimal outcomes.

If a team owns a feature, it owns it end-to-end, so there is no longer a single team or individual responsible for testing and nothing
else. It’s a you-build-it-you-own-it model where everyone shares the responsibility to maximize speed and agility. In the POD as a
Service model, a product director, scrum master, product lead, technical product analyst, full-stack developer, backend developer,
SDET, and DevSecOps automation engineer work together in an agile, DevOps manner as they develop and maintain applications
while making enhancements to incorporate emerging technologies and reduce technical debt.
• Technology transformation:
Adopting modern, cloud-native
technologies such as containerization,
serverless, microservices, and PaaS are
key to achieving maximum benefit from
app modernization.

But the massive scale of modernization

requires that the technology foundation
goes beyond updating functional
capabilities to also focus on establishing
DevOps and quality automation pipelines
that can continuously bring the
development and maintenance costs
down and help improve operational
excellence.

Additionally, with app modernization,

organizations shift from open-source
technologies with limited re-use and on-
premises infrastructure to leading-edge
solutions on three PaaS patterns:
traditional, custom, and public.

Key technologies for application modernization

Ways of Application Modernization
Application Modernization focuses on a single application or a tightly defined set of applications by either:
• Retiring applications or feature sets should be considered to reduce application complexity, address technical
debt and remove any capabilities no longer providing business value.
• Replatforming to the cloud to make the minimal set of changes needed to run in the cloud. For example, if
there's operational benefit from a standardized cloud-based deployment model, such as containerization, but
no supporting business case for further application changes and the resulting architectural characteristics are
acceptable, replatforming may be a suitable strategy for applications in the portfolio.
• Refactoring the application can be considered when there's a business need for product evolution, but the
legacy application requires restructuring to accommodate. An example would be adding an API layer to a
legacy application to expose the core assets.
• Rearchitecting the application and embarking on a cloud-native rewrite is a suitable option for high-value
legacy applications that often change, unlocking the friction for product evolution and new feature
development. Alternatively, a driving factor for this approach may be decoupling core business capabilities to
increase application stability or transition to more coherent and extensible application architecture.
• Reimagining an existing application to achieve a cloud-native architecture that’s better aligned with current
business needs.
• Resetting the teams with modern engineering disciplines, helps to realize the total value from cloud migration,
delivers meaningful ROI quickly, and enables to compete with a new generation of cloud-native organizations.
 Benefits of Application Modernization
Competitive edge: An organization can reap the advantages of a head start by embracing early application modernization.
Modernization enables the organization to integrate modern platforms and technologies and outpace laggards.

Enhanced compatibility: Modernization of legacy applications enhances its interoperability with new technologies, platforms, and
code. In addition, it enables organizations to seamlessly integrate their applications, so they’re better positioned to meet current and
future business demands.

Cloud-native: Modernization aids organizations in rearchitecting their legacy applications to cloud-native applications. This enables to
embrace cloud benefits like faster speed to market, scalability, agility, and lower costs.

Better efficiencies: Modernizing applications improves process efficiencies and business performance. Apps can be updated frequently
and refined with bug fixes and security patches. Modernization aids in operational simplicity and reduce the burden on IT operations.

Robust security: In a recent survey, 87% of IT decision-makers admitted that legacy applications make businesses more vulnerable to
security threats. This is because obsolete applications are incompatible with modern security standards and authentication methods.
Modernizing the applications can drastically wick off security vulnerabilities that legacy systems pose.

Improved user satisfaction: Whether it’s the employees or customers, using legacy applications can be a real hassle. Modernizing
applications with a refined user-facing interface, leading-edge functionalities, and innovative features will improve customer satisfaction
and brand reputation.

Staying relevant: Application modernization enables organizations to make the most of the digital technologies, including AI, machine
learning, big data, and cloud. It helps transform your IT ecosystem based on current market trends and build a flexible foundation for
future innovation.

Productivity boost: According to IBM, updating legacy stems could boost developers’ productivity by as much as 40%. Modernizing
applications and facilitating access to better developer services can help make engineering teams more productive and enhance time-to-
market.
 Conclusion:
• 15-35% infrastructure year-over-
year savings
• 30-50% lower application
maintenance and running costs
• 74% lower costs on hardware,
software, and staff
• 10% improvement in application
operational efficiency
• 14% boost in annual revenue,
which equates to USD 1 billion on
average for large organizations
References:
• Application modernization architecture: IBM's POV - IBM Cloud Architecture
Center
• Importance & Benefits of Application Modernization (veritis.com)
• The Benefits Of Application Modernization – Orases
• What is Application Modernization? | VMware Glossary
• https://www.capgemini.com/us-en/2021/01/the-three-pillars-of-app-modernization
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Thank you