Digital transformation, initially a survival strategy, has evolved into a continuous journey of improvement to achieve an organization’s business goals. To remain competitive, enterprises must consistently adopt new technologies. But what if they can’t upgrade their existing applications to the latest technologies? Thus, they still rely on outdated applications that don’t meet current demands. Application modernization becomes critical for addressing this issue.

One of the most significant reasons enterprises adopt new technologies is to increase efficiency and gain or retain their competitive edge. While newer tech companies have developed modern applications, proving the value of new infrastructure and applications, many organizations still face the challenge of dealing with legacy applications.

Most enterprise applications are simply lifted and shifted to new platforms without significant upgrades, providing only a temporary solution. As a result, these applications often struggle to scale and adapt to rapidly evolving business requirements. Therefore, organizations urgently need to modernize their applications with new technologies and practices that provide multiple benefits. However, it is vital to identify specific use cases before starting the application modernization process.

Critical Use Cases for Application Modernization

As described above, application modernization services address several critical needs for enterprises. Here are several every day and essential use cases (or reasons) that help organizations stay agile, meet customer expectations, and retain their competitive edge.

1. Enhanced Security

All software applications have a “use-by” date, which applies to critical enterprise applications. As digital transformations became integral to business operations, many applications were adopted across departments without adequate oversight. Over time, the legacy code within these applications becomes a significant hindrance, limiting innovation.

Monolithic legacy applications rely on outdated frameworks, software libraries, and operating systems, creating complications when integrating with newer software architectures. This forces DevOps teams to spend considerable resources trying to understand and integrate legacy code, which often wasn’t written following standard procedures and software development best practices and consequently may have inherent security vulnerabilities.

These vulnerabilities make systems susceptible to security and cyber threats. Many viruses exploit such weaknesses, and ransomware, phishing, and DDoS attacks have cost organizations millions by breaching security across infrastructure, applications, and business layers. Attackers are increasingly targeting public cloud infrastructures, emphasizing the need for advanced security measures to protect critical business assets.

Application modernization enables companies to transition to updated tools, technologies, frameworks, and platforms and even retire applications that no longer serve their purpose. Since everything from initial software development to customer experience relies on data integrity and efficiency, modernizing older applications helps improve data quality within workflows. Organizations can reduce bottlenecks caused by outdated systems, ensuring smoother and more secure project execution.

2. Boost Developer Productivity

Legacy systems stifle creativity and limit access to data and insights necessary for innovation. According to Forrester, “Creativity catalyzes a growth mindset in business.” Developers working with legacy systems often face frequent interruptions and rework, resulting in a frustrating work experience that hampers creativity and innovation.

For instance, a developer might spend Monday working on Feature A and commit it to a Git repository. On Tuesday, they might work on Feature B, which is unrelated to Feature A, and commit it to the Git repo. However, on Wednesday, while working on Feature D, they receive feedback about a configuration error in Feature A. This forces them to stop and revisit Monday’s work to fix the issue.

Such scenarios are common and frustrating for developers dealing with legacy applications and traditional development practices. This cycle of constant rework hampers innovation and reduces overall productivity, as developers spend more time fixing old code rather than creating new features.

Modern application development practices enhance application portability across various environments. Tools like Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions automate workload deployment to the most suitable environments. Adopting modern practices such as DevOps and automation provides real-time feedback, allowing developers to focus on their current tasks without worrying about previous code. They can write new features, commit them to Git, and move on to the next task without constant interruptions.

These modern practices significantly boost developer productivity and overall team performance, leading to faster delivery times and increased confidence in the development process. Modern application development practices enable teams to innovate and deliver high-quality products more efficiently by streamlining workflows and reducing rework.

3. Streamline Software Development and Deployment

Agile development has enabled continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. However, in many organizations, application deployment often remains a manual process, hindering the delivery of superior customer experiences and timely innovation. To address this, organizations must prioritize the continuous deployment aspect of the CI/CD pipeline.

Modernizing applications involves breaking down monolithic structures into event-driven microservices-based architectures, using advanced deployment mechanisms such as containers, container orchestration platforms (like Kubernetes), and serverless architectures. This approach reduces application size, enhances portability, accelerates the development lifecycle, and automates the deployment process, leading to faster and more efficient software delivery.

4. Embracing IoT and Edge Computing

Microservices, ephemeral functions, serverless architectures, and edge computing transform how businesses leverage the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT refers to smart devices connected over a network, which generate vast amounts of data that must be processed and analyzed. Edge computing processes this data locally, reducing the need to send it back to centralized data centers or the cloud.

Modern application architectures are crucial for effectively processing IoT data. Legacy systems, including those built with mainframe technology or even Java applications, are often rigid and inefficient for IoT and edge computing, complicating scalability, increasing latency, and wasting resources.

Modern development approaches, such as microservices and serverless architectures, allow for independent modification and improvement of application elements. This flexibility and agility support the dynamic needs of IoT workloads. For organizations unable to completely rewrite their legacy applications, identifying and modernizing key functionalities can enable them to adopt and support IoT initiatives. By converting these functionalities into modern APIs, businesses can ensure new workloads can efficiently consume them.

5. Enhancing Reliability, Availability, and Scalability

Many organizations prioritize application modernization for cost savings and achieving greater system reliability, stability, and scalability. Businesses adopt various modernization strategies, including lifting and shifting, refactoring, rearchitecting, rebuilding, and replacing applications tailored to their specific needs.

Companies are increasingly leveraging cloud-based resources to meet these objectives. Platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud offer robust solutions with 99.99% SLA guarantees. Organizations across diverse industries are adopting cloud technologies for improved availability, reliability, disaster recovery, and backup solutions. Statistics by statista.com report that the market revenue for cloud backup technology is projected to reach $6.82 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 23.4% since 2017.

6. Embracing Cloud Native and Microservices-Based Architectures

Initially, companies saw the cloud as just another data center and simply lifted and shifted workloads to the cloud without rethinking their strategies. This limited approach prevented the development of cloud native skills and failed to leverage the cloud’s full potential, such as automated performance management and stability.

Legacy architectures, designed for on-premises deployments, lack horizontal (and vertical) scalability. This limitation necessitates using larger cloud servers to handle workloads as if they were still on-premises, resulting in underutilized resources and increased costs.

Companies are modernizing their applications into cloud native architectures to unlock the cloud's true potential. This transformation ensures applications are resilient, reliable, scalable, secure, and cost-optimized from the outset, fully leveraging the advantages of cloud computing.

7. Modernizing Data Infrastructure

Legacy data, often entrenched in outdated databases, holds vital information but quickly becomes disordered, siloed, and segmented over time, making it cumbersome to manage and process. Many companies are migrating these legacy databases to modern environments to address this.

Organizations are transitioning from traditional enterprise data warehouses to data lakes using modern tools like Apache Spark and cloud-based solutions. While data warehouses remain useful for structured data, modern data platforms offer significant advantages. Cloud-based solutions provide scalable resources and the flexibility of pay-as-you-go models. These platforms support big data applications and enable automated resource provisioning, driving the adoption of modern data infrastructure.

Modernizing data infrastructure allows organizations to harness the full potential of their data, improve efficiency, and enable advanced analytics and real-time insights.

8. Accelerating App Development and Time to Market

Business leaders are under increasing pressure to drive innovation due to the rapid pace of technical advancements, the shift to remote work, and rising customer expectations. Application modernization is essential in meeting these demands by updating business processes and infrastructure. This approach accelerates innovation and reduces time to market by modernizing CI/CD pipelines, lowering maintenance costs, and improving data accessibility. Key technologies supporting this information include

• Microservices

Modernizing applications to a microservices-based architecture breaks them into smaller, loosely coupled components that can be deployed and scaled independently. This approach increases flexibility and efficiency, leading to faster development and deployment cycles.

• Containers

Containerization packages applications in a consistent, lightweight manner, allowing them to run uniformly across desktop, cloud, and on-premises environments. This flexibility helps organizations advance their cloud native strategies.

• Orchestration and Automation

Container management platforms like Kubernetes automate many operational tasks, including deployment, scaling, and networking. This automation ensures application portability and efficiency across multiple clouds and operating environments.

• Cloud Computing

Cloud technologies play a crucial role in application modernization. The cloud is the primary destination for application migration, including public, private, and hybrid platforms. Beyond IaaS and SaaS solutions, PaaS has become the preferred choice among developers, offering essential resources, tools, and libraries for innovation and accelerated software development.

Modernizing applications with these cloud technologies transforms processes and infrastructure, enabling businesses to innovate and bring products to market more rapidly.

9. Reduce infrastructure Costs and Improve Efficiency

Adopting modern application development practices streamlines infrastructure management. Serverless platforms like AWS Lambda eliminate the need to manage tasks such as configuring networking, allocating storage, and provisioning cloud instances. This allows development teams to focus on productivity, maintain a competitive edge, and deliver new features more frequently.

Cloud-based and cloud native development solutions further reduce infrastructure costs. Serverless architectures, for instance, charge organizations based on triggered events, complementing the pay-as-you-go cloud pricing model. This means companies only pay for the resources they consume. Consequently, serverless architectures have become popular across multiple industries, helping enterprises cut infrastructure costs by avoiding payments for idle or underutilized instances.

10. Transition from Old/Unsupported Operating Systems

Operating systems and servers have a finite lifespan. Microsoft has announced the end of support for several older operating systems. For instance, Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 reached their extended end-of-support (EOS) on October 10, 2023. Windows 10 IoT Core and Enterprise LTSC 2019 support ended on January 9, 2024. Additionally, Windows 11 version 21H2 will reach its end of support on October 8, 2024.

Once support ends, these systems will no longer receive regular security updates, leaving them vulnerable to cyberattacks. Running legacy applications on unsupported operating systems might seem cost-effective but carries significant risks, such as:

• Software Incompatibility

Modern applications are designed for the latest operating systems. Sticking with outdated operating systems can prevent your IT infrastructure from supporting new software, locking you into using legacy applications.

• Compliance Issues

Regulatory standards for data usage and storage have become stringent. Companies dealing with sensitive data, such as in healthcare, FinTech, and logistics, must update their systems to comply. Using outdated operating systems or unsecured applications can lead to security breaches, hefty fines, business shutdowns, or even legal consequences.

• High Operating Costs

Maintaining and fixing applications on unsupported operating systems is costly. Moreover, paying for extended support of patches from providers like Microsoft can be expensive. The financial impact of a failure in a mission-critical application can be substantial.

• Poor Performance and Reliability

Running business operations on legacy applications or old operating system versions likely means using aging servers and workstations prone to breakdowns. These outdated devices increase downtime risks and operational costs, making timely upgrades essential.

Security, compatibility, and compliance issues underscore the importance of continuously modernizing enterprise applications. Keeping your IT infrastructure updated ensures improved performance, security, and the agility to grow as needed.

11. Pursue a Multi-Cloud/Hybrid Cloud Strategy

The hybrid cloud market has been experiencing significant growth. According to recent reports, the market was valued at about $56 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $145 billion by 2026. This growth is driven by the increasing need for scalable, flexible IT infrastructure and seamless integration of on-premises and cloud environments.

Despite the benefits, many organizations have yet to adopt hybrid or multi-cloud strategies, often relying on legacy systems. However, interest in these approaches is growing. A recent survey found that 20.7% of respondents are considering hybrid and multi-cloud solutions to accelerate development, automate DevOps processes, and improve disaster recovery and cost management.

Adopting a hybrid cloud strategy fosters application modernization, allowing organizations to run processes smoothly and scale traditional and cloud native systems. This approach provides the flexibility required to innovate and maintain a competitive edge in today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape.

In conclusion

Application modernization is not just a technical necessity but a strategic imperative for enterprises aiming to stay competitive in today's rapidly evolving digital landscape. By modernizing legacy applications, organizations can enhance security, boost developer productivity, streamline software development, and embrace new technologies.

Furthermore, modernizing applications enables businesses to improve reliability, scalability, and efficiency while reducing infrastructure costs.

Ultimately, pursuing a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud strategy ensures that enterprises can innovate and adapt swiftly, meeting customer expectations and achieving long-term business success.