Prior to indulging in an exquisite meal, one would want to choose a fine wine to go along with it. The more mature your wine is, the better it tastes. When it comes to wine, age is preferred but it is not the same when it comes to your software. For example, your current version of Windows has thousands of updates and is far more capable than its previous versions. The system you choose to invest in becomes the very foundation of your business. Application modernization is the tool that bridges the gap from where your team is, to the modernized approach you want them to adopt.

Legacy application modernization is essentially a project designed for creating new business value from diverse aging and existing applications. This is achieved by opting to update and equip applications with contemporary features and capabilities.

As organizations are forced to continually reassess their array of applications to determine whether they still support and provide adequate business value — application modernization updates your legacy application that best scales your company’s robust architecture.

Most businesses across all industries are turning to cloud-based architecture to support their IT workloads. According to a survey by LogicMonitor, it is assessed that more than 83% of the workloads of the IT enterprises will be based on the cloud by 2020.1 Most organizations are starting to pay attention to legacy application modernization to cope with the accelerated development in IT architecture. The reasons for the accelerated transformation are:

• Lagging on speed
• Old fashioned UI/UX
• Difficult to update software
• Security issues

Before we start exploring the keys to application modernization, it is crucial to know its importance. The systems you choose to invest in, become the very foundation on which your business works and with the right systems and tools in place, your business can reach its full potential.

Some of the significant benefits of application modernization are as follows:

Cost Reduction:

When you move from the local premise to cloud-based solutions, you are likely to experience more than 5x reduction in cost. Organizations spend more than 60% of their budget on a legacy system and the move to cloud-based architecture can significantly reduce cost.2

Improved business agility:

Companies with modernized applications stand a better chance to serve their vendors and customers efficiently because they usually find it very hard to develop new features with their legacy system. Applications that have been redesigned in order to suit distinct business requirements ideally have well-managed databases, better coding structures, and highly flexible applications.

Better Security:

One of the most important reasons why you should consider modernizing your existing legacy system is better security and protection of your critical business transactions.

Most organizations choose to run on legacy applications and ancient settings because they are not willing to take the risk of cloud-based infrastructure. The application modernization process can be difficult without having well-strategized approaches that will have a significant business outcome.

Fundamentally, organizations setting out on any application modernization activity should take out the time to dissect the heritage framework they need to refactor. As the application should be repurposed into an exceptionally strong SaaS application, organizations need to thoroughly examine their working frameworks and system servers to guarantee they are equipped for the same.

Before the suitability assessment, a general plan is chalked out for successful migration to the cloud. In general, application migration or transformation to the cloud is the process of redeploying an application on a newer platform. This foundation is administered by the Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) to determine resilience capacities, stable economic, operational cost, and further scalability.

To plan for a successful migration to the cloud, organizations must first implement a cloud suitability assessment, based on business and technology requirements, to determine which of their on-premise applications fit in the cloud.

The principal target of modernizing your applications is to adjust application capacities with that of your corporate methodology and business work processes. For a modernization project to be truly successful, the IT goals should be aligned with the business goals of an organization.

If you decide to continue with your legacy application, your efficiency and business output will pale in comparison to your competitors, as they will move on to greener pastures through modernization and the latest infrastructure. Even if you optimally work on a cloud-based foundation now, chances are that new features or updates may cause your application to break down in the near future.

Therefore, it is important for your business to leverage the optimal capacity of cloud-based technology while ensuring that its system can competently sustain the evolving business requirements. A proper strategy must be put in place to make sure of this fact. This must involve the right elements for your business to have a flawless transition to application modernization.