8 Step Guide to Legacy Software Modernization

Legacy system modernization has become a trending imperative for businesses aiming to transform their processes and overcome barriers to growth. In this dynamic business environment, there’s a pressing need for modernizing systems to stay relevant and efficient. Explore why businesses are increasingly recognizing the need for modernizing systems for better operational efficiency and sustained growth.

Researchers state that 70% of all firms will have accelerated digital technologies by 2022, altering current business procedures to improve customer satisfaction, worker productivity, and company resilience. The digital transformation of IT involves updating outdated systems and procedures to boost productivity and spread more intelligence throughout the entire company. Another research by Businesswire states that 74% of firms started but never finished a project to modernize a legacy system. According to a recent global study by Advanced, a misalignment of priorities between technical and leadership teams is one of the biggest barriers to a successful modernization project.

To achieve this growth via modernizing legacy systems, one approach businesses must keep in mind is to identify a problem before initiating any change. Businesses must remember, more like Rome wasn’t built in a day, all your systems cannot be updated in one go. Taking a step-by-step approach and technique for modernizing a system that enlists a clear vision of what and how you wish to modernize is necessary to ensure success. In this article, we’ll talk about a comprehensive guide on how to modernize legacy systems. But first things first, what’s this legacy modernizing all about?

What is Legacy Systems?

To start with the basics, a legacy system is a collection of outdated processes, software, and infrastructure. Legacy systems often utilize customer-owned, hosted, managed, and supported software and hardware and are situated in monolithic, tightly connected environments. Although these systems are useful, they can be expensive to maintain, and operate, and demand specialized IT skills that are hard to come by. In the long run, they also limit a company’s potential to innovate.

Legacy Systems Modernizations

Legacy app modernization involves updating and optimizing business systems to improve operational efficiency, overcome technological limitations, satisfy customer experience standards, and support adoption and integration with other systems built on more recent technological platforms,

It’s a process that’s mostly initiated when a company is forced to choose between maintaining outdated, expensive hardware that is incompatible with current technologies and taking on the enormous work of overhauling infrastructure to benefit from the finest platform for its business objectives. This forces CIOs and IT leaders to weigh several variables to decide when to modernize, where modernization will have the biggest impact, and how to organize the project effectively to minimize business disruptions and downtime.

When to Start Legacy System Modernization: Key Indicators

You must thoroughly comprehend all of your current systems, evaluate the operation’s performance, and decide whether or not current technologies are adequate to meet your long-term goals.

Here’s a list of 5 checkpoints for you to consider that can help organize your roadmap strategy. Consider asking the below questions:

1. Can your current systems handle diverse data types from partner systems and internal software?
2. To connect to new applications, do you need to modify integrations?
3. Can you quickly handle the rising data quantities brought on by new applications?
4. Can you quickly identify and correct data processing issues using your current IT systems?
5. Does maintaining outdated infrastructure cost more than modernizing it?

If your answer to any or all of the above questions is a ‘yes’, then it’s time for your business to consider legacy software modernization. Most businesses consider approaching a software development company to help initiate the process.

Also Read: Application Modernization Challenges and Solution

Popular Legacy System Modernization Approaches

How obsolete software develops is influenced by numerous things. Sometimes adding just one line of code may suffice, while other times you may need to completely reimplement the solution. It’s essential to choose the correct approach right from the beginning. There are two kinds of approaches: revolutionary and evolutionary. Let’s have a look at both of them:

1. Revolutionary Approach: Big Bang

It happens when your company develops a complete removal of the previous solutions. It resembles starting anything from scratch. You can move on to the next type if you think updating an existing system is risk-free, but this strategy is only appropriate for companies who are willing to take a chance on security issues, the loss of important data, or system unavailability. Then it makes sense to develop a fresh solution. If the original software is unable to manage business processes or resolve problems, the innovative approach is ideal.

2. Evolutionary Approach: Bad-Aid

This strategy aims to improve rather than build everything from scratch. Although it takes less time and effort, it is not always the best choice. However, there are fewer risks of data loss and downtime. This approach is more concerned with finding and removing the causes of problems than it is with really solving them.

Also Read: How Quality Assurance Boosts App Modernization

How to Initiate Legacy System Modernization for Your Business?

No matter what approach you choose, you need to have an action plan in place before you take a step. The more detailed your plan is the easier it’ll be for you to define success factors, allocate a budget, and define timelines for your project. You must have a clear project scope, one exact problem that you have identified in advance that you wish to address and a possible, thought-through solution to the problem.

Let’s have a look at a step-by-step process to initiate legacy system modernization.

1. Analyze Your Business Objectives

• What is it that you are trying to change?
• What are the main objectives of the company?
• What is the anticipated completion date?
• Who are the parties involved?
• What particular parts of your company might be impacted?

In the first stage, you must have a clear-cut answer to all the above questions mutually decided and comprehended by the company’s management.

You must monitor developer time, create a help desk ticketing system, and record routine manual tasks to define your baseline. If you don’t have a baseline, you won’t be able to understand your objectives.

2. Create A Roadmap

Updating a change in your systems can be done through a variety of approaches. You must select which is the best choice for the app you want to update. Seven options have been ranked by Gartner based on the ease of implementation (the easier it is, the less risk and impact it will have on the system and the business processes; the harder, the more risk and impact it will have) your business can consider that.

• Encapsulate
• Rehost
• Replatform
• Refactor
• Rearchitect
• Rebuild
• Replace

By comparing the seven modernization alternatives in terms of their impact on technology, architecture, functionality, cost, and risk, you can choose which modernization strategy will benefit your organization the most.

3. Assess Your Maturity

What level of familiarity does your company currently have with the tools, operating models, and migration process? If there is a gap, is there a means to close it? For the employee to feel comfortable using new technologies, training methods or consulting services to supplement internal resources may be required. You must have answers to these questions and define how you plan to fill the stated gaps in your system.

4. Plan Current Legacy Data Migration Strategy

What is the goal of modernization? This procedure entails providing and maintaining modern infrastructure that is rich in different elements. Every area of the company and IT processes will be impacted. Don’t forget that there is always space for improvement, regardless of the industry you operate in

5. Choose Your Modernization Approach

In deciding which of the seven options to select, you can consider more than just effort and impact by assessing each one according to its

• Workload
• Architecture
• Cost (modernization and continued operational)
• Risk
• Operations
• Security

The importance of each of these will vary depending on the organization. However, issues like consumer demand changes and competitiveness are also taken into account when determining the true worth of each modernization strategy. Therefore, when assessing each choice, one might take into account the relative significance of traits like scalability and agility.

6. Check For Security & Regulatory Compliance

When software is upgraded, security issues are a constant consideration. When they are updated, how will you handle these issues? Every organization has a security structure that needs to be followed and evaluated, among other things, for compliance.

Software designers must weigh their options for protecting their apps in the absence of an operating system. Dynamic application security testing (DAST) and static application security testing are typically included in each deployed container in modernization projects using container technology (SAST).

This makes it possible for developers to check containers for security upgrades, outdated versions, and known vulnerabilities both before and after they go into production. These security features are built into the program itself, allowing for automated node recovery if a virtual host goes down.

7. Prepare For The Future

Consumers, a competitive market, an unsteady economy, and the opportunities offered by emerging technology constantly modify how businesses operate. The lifespan of a typical application is 6–8 years.

Because of its often monolithic nature, legacy software forces businesses to use difficult-to-update programs. In the current digital environment, greater agility is needed to put out new features or capabilities. The best modernization strategy involves deciding which level of adaptability to change will work best. Despite being able to connect to other microservices, an encapsulated application still has the same restrictions as its original code base. Software that has been refactored or rearchitected, however, is more likely to satisfy an organization’s future requirements.

8. Ask Around & Choose The Perfect Legacy System Modernization Partner

Because it is not their primary emphasis, the majority of firms do not constantly develop or modernize apps. Internal teams could not have the necessary expertise to operate in the “new” environment, necessitating training. Therefore, it is improbable that there will be sufficient internal resources to make all the necessary decisions regarding the modernization method, the cloud, or the support for microservices.

Instead, to help with application modernization, many businesses rely on a reliable software partner. Look for a software development company that has experience re-engineering systems, processes, and technology using a variety of modernization strategies. You should hire a team that makes use of Agile and DevOps techniques to shorten the time it takes for your modernization project to become life.

Read More: Data Modernization Role in Digital Transformation

Summing up

The rules of the game are being dictated by the quickly changing digital environment for business owners. Therefore, to keep ahead of the competition and stay on the edge of technology, businesses must act quickly and frequently upgrade their IT systems. However, the assistance of experienced application modernization services is required for a modernization program to be successful.

Your business does a major disservice in terms of productivity and development potential if you continue to use antiquated systems software. By updating it, you’ll be able to stay on top of the latest technology advancements, and give your business new development opportunities while maximizing income, process efficiency, and cost savings.

Author

Siddharth Verma

Technical Lead