5 Reasons Why Modernization of Legacy System Should Be a Priority in Decision-Making

The ever-changing digital landscape calls for a careful consideration of new resources and technologies that influence a company’s competitiveness in the market. In this regard, innovation in products and services, as well as the implementation of new features and functionalities, are essential for a company to stand out from its competitors.

Legacy system modernization is a crucial step toward achieving the agility, growth, and differentiators needed to maintain and acquire new customers. This is because the journey of modernizing legacy systems brings forth more flexible architectures, up-to-date technologies, and expansive environments for business scalability.

5 Reasons to Consider System Modernization

System modernization should be a priority in the decision-making process for companies that aim to remain competitive in the market. Here are the reasons why:

Technological Update

System modernization enables the adoption of newer and more efficient technologies. This includes updating programming languages, frameworks, libraries, and development tools. By utilizing state-of-the-art technologies, businesses can leverage performance improvements, enhanced security, and advanced functionalities, resulting in more robust and scalable systems.

Service-Oriented Architecture

The modernization of legacy systems may involve the adoption of service-oriented architectures, such as microservices architecture. This allows for the decomposition of the system into independent and highly cohesive services connected through lightweight APIs. Microservices architecture facilitates scalability, maintenance, and continuous evolution of the system, while also better supporting integration with other applications.

Virtualization and Containers

This transformation can also encompass infrastructure virtualization or the use of containers, such as Docker. In this context, it provides greater efficiency in utilizing hardware resources, facilitates application deployment and portability, and simplifies the management of development, testing, and production environments.

Data Integration and APIs

This process may involve the adoption of modern approaches to data integration and API exposure. This enables efficient exchange of information with other systems, both internal and external, through updated standards and protocols. Therefore, data integration and APIs facilitate collaboration between systems and promote the reuse of functionalities.

Automation and DevOps

System modernization can involve the automation of development, deployment, and operations processes through DevOps practices. This includes the use of automation tools for building, testing, and deploying, as well as the adoption of continuous delivery pipelines. Automation and DevOps accelerate the development cycle, improve software quality, and reduce the response time to requirement changes and bug fixes.

The staged systems modernization journey:

The journey of system modernization can vary according to the specific needs and requirements of each company. However, there are some general stages in this process. Learn more about them below:

Analysis and Planning

During this initial stage, a detailed analysis of the existing legacy systems is conducted, which examines the functional and non-functional requirements, as well as the risks and challenges of the application. Activities such as analyzing the source code, system architecture, and infrastructure are carried out. This includes dependency analysis, identification of performance and security issues, code quality evaluation, and estimation of the effort required for modernization. Based on this assessment, a modernization plan is developed, defining the goals and technical objectives to be achieved.

Requirements Gathering

Next, a detailed definition of the requirements for the system to be modernized takes place through interviews with stakeholders, analysis of existing documents, and information gathering workshops. These requirements are documented in artifacts such as use cases, functional and non-functional specifications, class diagrams, and sequence diagrams.

Approach Selection

Based on the requirements, the most suitable modernization approach is selected. This may involve techniques such as refactoring the existing source code, restructuring the architecture, introducing emerging technologies, migrating to a new platform, or completely rewriting the system. The choice is based on criteria such as cost, effort, business impact, scalability, and compatibility with the existing infrastructure.

Development and Implementation

In this stage, the activities of developing the system to be modernized take place. Current tools and languages are used in accordance with design patterns and agile development practices. Software engineering techniques such as Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) are also employed to ensure code quality and continuous delivery of functionalities.

Data Migration and Integration

If necessary, the migration of data from the legacy system to the newly modernized system occurs. Techniques such as Extraction, Transformation, and Loading (ETL) are used to ensure data consistency and integrity during the migration. Additionally, efforts are made to integrate the new system with other existing systems and services in the organization, using integration standards such as Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

Testing and Validation

After development, comprehensive testing is conducted to validate the modernized system. This includes unit testing, integration testing, user acceptance testing, load testing, and security testing. Test automation tools and testing frameworks like JUnit and Selenium are used to ensure adequate coverage and early detection of defects.

Deployment and Monitoring

In this stage, the modernized system is deployed in a cloud environment. Deployment techniques such as containerization and deployment automation tools like Kubernetes are employed. Continuous monitoring of the system in production is crucial, using performance monitoring tools, logs, and metrics. This enables the detection and resolution of performance issues, ensures system availability, and allows for necessary adjustments.

Maintenance and Evolution

System modernization requires a continuous cycle of maintenance and evolution. Change management processes need to be established, such as version control and code review, to handle bug fixes and incremental improvements. Continuous evolution of the system involves adopting DevOps practices like continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) to enable rapid deployment of new functionalities. Additionally, it is important to stay abreast of technological trends and perform regular updates to ensure that the modernized system aligns with the organization’s ever-changing needs.

How to Prepare Your Company for Emerging Technologies?

Using these new technologies effectively requires strategic planning and a careful approach. Here are some important steps to consider:

How Cloud Migration Can Improve Resource Management and Reduce Infrastructure Costs

According to a Gartner study, by 2027, over 50% of companies will migrate their systems to the cloud to accelerate their business initiatives. In this regard, cloud migration helps maintain competitiveness in the market and drives business evolution efficiently and at scale. This is because, by migrating to the cloud, companies can benefit from flexible, scalable, and highly available infrastructure resources. This allows for the optimization of operational costs, eliminating the need for heavy investments in hardware and on-premises infrastructure.

Furthermore, the cloud offers a wide range of managed services such as data storage, large-scale processing, data analytics, and machine learning, enabling companies to leverage advanced technologies without the need to develop and maintain the infrastructure internally.

Cloud migration also provides greater flexibility and agility in deploying new services and applications, accelerating time to market and promoting innovation. With the ability to quickly and efficiently scale resources, the cloud allows companies to adapt to constantly changing demands, offering a significant competitive advantage. In this way, you only pay for the resources you use and the time you use them, which, when well-managed, generates cost optimization.

How can specialized services help with the challenges of system modernization?

Specialized services play a crucial role in overcoming the complex challenges associated with system modernization. By relying on the technical expertise and specialized knowledge of these services, companies can obtain a comprehensive and accurate assessment of legacy systems, identifying areas for improvement and evaluating potential risks and impacts.

Furthermore, experts can provide specialized guidance in selecting and implementing the most appropriate technologies, as well as defining modern architectures, developing strategic migration and modernization plans, empowering the team, and providing ongoing support during implementation. Thus, your company can accelerate the modernization process, minimize risks, and ensure the delivery of updated and optimized systems capable of meeting technical and business demands.

Is your company facing challenges caused by legacy and on-premises systems? Talk to our experts and discuss the obstacles preventing your organization from growing and scaling!