Why Is Application Modernization Essential and Is It Moving Beyond Choice to Necessity?

Application modernization can be described as the process of updating older software applications to align them with current computing trends and capabilities. This is also known as legacy modernization.

App modernization can lead to 30-50% lower application maintenance and running costs. It produces approximately 74% lower hardware, software, and staffing costs.

But why should you modernize your applications?

Why Should You Modernize Your Applications?

To be precise, legacy applications get outdated and cause compatibility issues over time.

This is one of the biggest reasons why legacy applications are modernized. But here are a few other challenges that it can cause, due to which you might have to modernize them.

Challenges Posed By Legacy Applications

The applications can become legacy applications and need modernization because of the following reasons:

• These applications no longer get updated, get customer support or even maintenance from the developers
• They are no longer sold and need outdated systems to run and maintain.
• The software is too old to support or use on current devices. When it gets old, it can even get difficult for developers to use it for further integration.
• The software gets slower or has performance issues when used.
• Repairs take far too long in comparison to new systems.
• Maintenance expenses grow too high to justify continuing.
• They are too vulnerable to security risks and cannot be modified to meet contemporary cybersecurity requirements.

These applications are modernized to meet newer trends and demands and solve these challenges. This comes with a lot of potential benefits.

Benefits of Modernization

Modernizing applications offers a comprehensive range of benefits:

1. Reduced Costs

Legacy modernization reduces IT costs by up to 13% and boosts revenue by over 14%.

On the contrary, older systems are prone to breakdowns and require extra resources; modernization eliminates these issues without a total IT overhaul.

2. Increased Business Agility

Modernization accelerates IT adoption rates, making systems more reliable, flexible, faster, and easier to scale. This helps you stay ahead of the competition and is relevant to industry standards. You can also consider refactoring the services into microservices that easily support faster development of new features.

To help you through the process, future-ready platforms like OpenShift ensure stability and support for mission-critical applications.

3. Improved Support for Modern Workflows and Employee Productivity

Legacy platforms may not support modern workplace trends like BYOD, remote work, and intelligent data analysis. But if your app is up-to-date and modernized, it can help you and your staff enjoy modern conveniences and enhance workflow and productivity.

4. Enhanced Customer Experience and Brand Reputation:

Legacy apps do not have newer and trendy features that the users might already be used to. These could be touchpoints like CRMs and chatbots, which are extremely important for enriching the customer experience and building trust.

Modernization Strategies

Once you decide to upgrade your software application, you can consider the following strategies. These are the most basic strategies we usually apply to any modernization process.

1. Cloud Migration:

• Start by evaluating the suitability of the application for cloud computing.
• Then, choose the appropriate cloud environment (public, private, or hybrid).
• Lastly, migrate the application to the chosen cloud platform. 
• You can even leverage cloud-native services and features to enhance scalability and resilience.

2. Containerization:

• Containerization has become extremely important for sorting out the data architecture for any application.
• You can do this using technologies like Docker, allowing for easier deployment and management across different environments.
• Implement container orchestration with tools like Kubernetes to automate the deployment, scaling, networking, and other aspects of containerized applications.

3. Microservices Architecture:

• As already mentioned before, refactoring is significant for apps these days. It divides the application into a microservices architecture, breaking it into smaller, loosely coupled components.
• Each microservice should focus on a specific business function, enabling independent development, deployment, scaling, etc. This helps the app be debugged and updated easily and quickly.

4. Orchestration and Automation:

• In addition to containerization, you can also choose to automate operational tasks related to container management and orchestration, such as deployment, scaling, and monitoring. This will help you better monitor and maintain the containers.
• To do this, you can implement continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines to streamline the delivery of updates and new features.

5. Security and Compliance:

• Data safety and protection have become increasingly important these days. With the increasing cyber-attack threats, security and compliance measures must be highly stringent. 
• You can start by implementing robust security measures to protect the application and its data in the cloud environment.
• To be highly sure, you can even ensure that you match the compliance requirements with industry regulations, such as GDPR or HIPAA.

How To Choose The Right Strategy For Your Business?

The best strategy for your application will depend on a number of factors, such as its age, complexity, and business criticality. It's wise to carefully evaluate your options before deciding on a modernization approach. 

To help you out, here are a few factors that affect the choice process:

1. Clearly outline your business goals and objectives for modernization. This could include reducing operational costs, improving agility, enhancing customer experience, or complying with industry regulations.
2. Prioritize these objectives based on their importance to your business strategy.
3. The available budget and financial resources. Estimate the upfront costs, ongoing maintenance expenses, potential savings, and expected ROI for a better assessment.
4. The urgency of modernization, as well as any time constraints
5. The complexity of the existing applications and systems, as well as the level of technical debt
6. Compatibility with your existing systems, 
7. Scalability of the strategy, 
8. Security features of the platform, 
9. If you're considering third-party vendors or service providers for modernization, evaluate their expertise, experience, track record, and references. Also check the strategy and vendor's support and future-proofing capabilities.
10. Most importantly, make sure that the chosen modernization strategy aligns with your broader business needs and objectives.

How Cubet Helped an Aviation Company?

One of our Aviation industry clients faced challenges with their legacy Qualification Management System. The software was characterized by its use of Laravel Blade and Laravel for the front and back end, respectively, with MySQL as the database. This setup led to UI issues, slow performance, and scalability limitations, compounded by the usage of complex JavaScript.

To address these issues, Cubet undertook a comprehensive revamp of the system, adopting Vue.js for the front end and optimizing the MySQL database schema. Additionally, new APIs were developed in Laravel, while measures were implemented to simplify and streamline JavaScript complexities.

The outcome was transformative: the system achieved high-performance levels, scalability, and an intuitive user interface. Furthermore, Cubet's efforts resulted in the seamless integration of new features into the existing system, marking a significant enhancement in overall functionality and user experience.

The Future of Application Modernization

Recently, the famous food delivery app Zomato added AR features to a few of its restaurants' dishes. But this is just the start.

Several key trends and developments will likely shape the future of application modernization. As artificial intelligence and machine learning improve, they'll help automate tasks, improve performance, and make apps more user-friendly. 

A new development of serverless computing focuses on making deployment easier and cutting down on extra work. When serverless computing is merged with AI and ML, it gives birth to edge computing. Using this, you can automate the apps and speed up its runtime. 

With more companies using different cloud systems, it's vital that updated apps can work well across all of them. And because security is a big concern, integrating it into every step of making apps (called DevSecOps) is crucial. Tools like Docker and Kubernetes will still be necessary, making apps more flexible and easier to manage. By keeping up with these trends and industry changes, businesses can make sure their apps stay relevant and work smoothly in the future.

That’s why you should not waste time and contact Cubet for your modernization needs. Cubet team is experienced in developing customized solutions for every brand they work for. 

With years of experience, Cubet is your perfect software development partner. So don’t wait. Contact Cubet today!