7 Key Drivers of Legacy Application Modernization
Any process disruption or system downtime can be catastrophic for market credibility and customer reputation. This is also true for processes and systems that do not meet contemporary requirements (such as speed & flexibility of operations, ease of use, integration with cloud service or social media, and so many other things). And this is exactly what happens with legacy applications and infrastructure due to outdated technology and lack of scalability. You may already have seen instances of unforeseen downtimes and bad customer experiences while working with legacy systems.
Today, legacy application modernization has become the key strategy for helping businesses thrive, staying competitive, and delivering high customer experiences.
According to a Gartner report, more than 90% of CIOs prefer to modernize their applications by 2025.
Top 7 driving factors of application modernization:
- Cost management:
With increasing sizes of businesses, legacy application maintenance can become increasingly costly too. With legacy applications, organizations could spend as much as 60% of their IT budgets on maintenance! And they may be unable to reduce complexities and manual work, further escalating costs.
2. Data Integration challenges:
Data is the new revenue engine for business growth. As legacy applications work on different technologies and platforms, it’s relatively challenging for businesses to integrate data and meet modern compliance standards. Lack of data integration impacts the visibility/ availability of data. and the decision-making capability of the organization. Further, data silos often prevent organizations from taking advantage of new technologies or new business models and being able to gain a competitive advantage.
3. Lack of business agility:
Business agility refers to an organization’s ability to quickly and cost-effectively respond to market changes and emerging opportunities to deliver products and services of high value and quality while minimizing the wastage of resources. With agility comes productivity and better customer experience. But traditional applications prevent you from tracking real-time user behavior and delivering on their expectations.
4. Security challenges:
Legacy applications can be very prone to vulnerabilities that lead to data leakage and security issues. Lack of vendor support is one of the major challenges, while inherent limitations of older programming languages can be another common factor. A legacy system that seemed secured five or ten years ago may no longer be a secure platform.
DevSecOps is a modern collaborative approach that integrates security as a shared responsibility throughout the IT lifecycle. It emphasizes the need to build a secure foundation for DevOps initiatives. Embracing DevSecOps integrates automated security testing directly into the development process, ensuring security before deployment.
5. Early retirement of applications:
Obsolete and aging technologies result in heavy maintenance costs, inefficient utilization of resources, and hinder innovation — leading to the replacement of the old version with a newer version or removing an application that is obsolete and not in use anymore.
6. Lack of tech talent:
Along with technology obsolescence and inflexible infrastructure, a shortage of tech talent is one of the critical reasons businesses consider legacy modernization. Today, companies are increasingly facing challenges in maintaining legacy applications built with COBOL and other such technologies.
According to Adobe’s State of Work report, over 60% of employees have felt dissatisfied because of the software and tech-stack they use at work and are unwilling to work on legacy technologies.
7: Innovation, evolving customer needs, and new market opportunities:
Integrating conversational AI applications like chatbots can help your business by keeping it live 24x7 and engaging your customers.
Businesses or brands are heading towards immersive experiences over personalized experiences with the emergence of the Metaverse. With its evolution, rather than a traditional shopping experience, consumers are more likely to try products virtually to check how they fit into their requirements.
IKEA is using its Place app to show you an augmented reality image of what its furniture will look like in your apartment.
25% of consumers are expected to spend at least one hour a day in the metaverse by 2026.
Conclusion:
Market disruptions, evolving customer demands, and the need for a digital landscape have forced businesses to undertake legacy modernization as a top priority to deliver innovative products and services quickly and efficiently.
If you have legacy modernization plans, our expert team can help you reimagine your core IT infrastructure with agile and resilient modernization solutions to become truly digital.
Click here to know more about how we can convert your legacy applications into a modern, high-performance, and authentic cloud-centric architecture.
