The typewriter – the grandfather of a word processor – was once a world-changing invention. The common writing machine or the-then gold standard for creating typed documents had a steady fan following for everything it offered: distraction-free writing, romantic sensibilities and more.

Over the years, this mighty machine found a stiff competitor in computer and gradually got lost while still staying with a microscopic minority. Computer redefined how simple and quick word processing could be. It made writing a collaborative practice; transparently documented and electronically judged. It increased productivity, saved hours of efforts, and happiness (unless you love all things retro). With a computer on your side, you no longer need a typewriter, a copy machine, and even a postal service.

Over the next 5 minutes, you will read –

• Issues with the legacy system
• What is application modernization?
• Roadmap to an effective application modernization
• Needful measures to accelerate legacy migration

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What are the issues with the legacy system?

The legacy applications relatively share the same story as a typewriter, with one exception: They are still widely used. Once considered revolutionary, their age made them obsolete and non-aligned to the new priorities of changing times. You may find the following –

• Fragmented IT landscape distributed across locations
• Sub-optimal application design that cannot handle new requests
• Dependency on individual resources with specific skills in obsolete programming languages
• Compatibility challenges that threaten business interactions

…Well, the list just begins. While companies continue to invest 80% of their IT budgets on the maintenance of outdated applications, legacy applications increase device dependency, are not papered for change; crash, fail to perform as expected. They are mostly incompatible with modern software systems.

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What is App Modernization and why do you need it?

Application modernization serves as a replacement of your legacy systems, step-by-step. It careful identifies the key priorities of the project and strategically plan for execution. Application modernization is all about re-purposing, refactoring, rehosting, re-coding, re-architecting and re-building of your legacy system to realign it with your current business needs and changing market dynamics. The migration of legacy to new application and platforms provide a number of advantages; including

• The creation of the IT landscape with a new architectural paradigm that aligns with the dynamic business needs
• Modern development tools accelerate innovation, make collaboration more fluid and connected
• Short development times result quickly to market products, save money and hours of efforts in testing, development, and deployment
• Applications operating in the cloud offer increased mobility, flexibility, and process automation
• Enterprises can easily migrate their essential and non-essential assets to more effective, scalable Cloud-based systems with increased positive productivity outcomes

On top of that, modernization offers improved compliance, minimizes disruption, lowers risks, and significantly reduce dependency on IT resources More importantly, it eliminates the need for legacy applications to be viewed as a liability.

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Roadmap to an effective application modernization

• Identify the pattern and working system to narrow down on core functionality and process. Develop a practical model of the desired version of the upcoming system comprehensively
• Analyze and deconstruct the available legacy systems into modernizable modules
• Migrate legacy code, functionality into applicable technology and target interface
• Improvise, bring changes as necessary

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