Streamline Business Operations with App Modernization

Application Modernization and Cloud Migration

The first step in modernizing your apps may be committing to a cloud, multi-cloud, on-premise or hybrid infrastructure—but in many cases, you can modernize using any one, or a combination of these solutions. So it’s important to examine the scope and direction of your modernization and then choose your approach.

Here are some of the most common approaches:

• Lift and shift. This involves taking your app as-is and moving it to the cloud.
• Modifying the code your app already has. This is typically done before moving the app to either a cloud or on-premise server. You modify it to ensure compatibility with the new architecture once it’s been shifted.
• Platform as a service (PaaS). With PaaS, you use a specific cloud provider’s platform as the environment in which to run your app.
• Software as a Service (SaaS). Opting for a SaaS solution is often the most straightforward choice. After a discovery phase, you hand the reins over to a provider, and they craft a solution. This gives you access to emerging technologies and enables you to transition seamlessly, but you may have to tangle with being locked into that vendor for a long time.
• Re-architecting your current app. If your current application is cloud-compatible, you can re-architect it. If you take advantage of CI/CD pipelines and agile DevOps processes, you can streamline your re-architecture—at least to a degree—but this approach is often the most time-intensive because it requires a lot of coding.

Defining the Modern Application

A modern app is one that combines several services to produce a digitally transformed process. The services the modernization unifies don’t all have to be new, cutting-edge tools. It’s very common to include a legacy service in your overall modernization infrastructure. The key is that you’re bringing multiple tools together to facilitate a process that’s more efficient, more feature-rich or both.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that a modernized application environment precludes the use of legacy systems—and using modern cloud-based solutions doesn’t necessarily equate to a modernized ecosystem. For instance, you can incorporate a legacy database by linking it to a cloud-based solution and populating the cloud solution at set intervals. While this solution uses an older technology, it’s still modernized because it’s more efficient and provides enhanced flexibility.