The Basics of Application Modernization

Today’s financial services organizations operate in a challenging environment that includes rapid change, new technologies and the need to meet increasingly demanding user experiences. These conditions drive the adoption of digital transformation strategies to remain competitive and meet customer demands for faster interactions with brands and increased self-service. This blog post will explore the benefits of modernizing legacy applications in the financial services industry with a Proof of Concept (POC) using an application virtualization solution. Read on to learn more!

Application Modernization

Application modernization refers to the process of re-engineering and re-platforming existing applications to make them fit for purpose in the modern digital age. It has become an important consideration for organizations that wish to remain competitive and efficient by leveraging the capabilities and scalability of modern technology. It is not a one-time affair but a continuous process that companies should keep in their regular business-making plans. With modernization, organizations can save up to 70% on their IT budgets, speed up app delivery times by up to 50%, increase app functionality by 25% and improve user experience by up to 70%. Indeed, application modernization is one of this decade's most important IT initiatives. In more detail, application modernization involves the transformation of business processes, business operations and IT infrastructures. It aims to address the challenges organizations face due to their legacy IT systems, which are often complex, time-consuming and costly to maintain.

In simpler terms, the main goal of modernization is to reduce the ongoing operational cost and risk of maintaining legacy systems by replacing them with more modern and scalable technology. Application modernization can also increase competitiveness by enabling new product features and advanced capabilities not previously possible.

Application Modernization Roadmap

When planning an application modernization initiative, it’s important to first look at the applications you have in place and the environment they’re running in. This will help you determine if the existing applications could benefit from modernization.

Approach to Application Modernization

When it comes to application modernization, organizations should first look at what applications they have in production and find out if they are modern or not. If they are not, then modernization is something that would be needed. Modernization can be done in many ways. The most popular ways to modernize an application are platform migration, re-platforming and re-hosting.

● Re-platforming: This involves taking an application, which is running on a mainframe, and bringing it down to a client-server, or vice versa.
● Re-hosting: This involves taking an application and deploying it in a different environment. 
● Platform migration: This involves taking an application running on one server and bringing it down to another. This is especially helpful when you wish to deploy an application on different hardware..

Key Takeaways

Modernizing and re-engineering existing applications can provide significant cost savings, scalability and agility benefits. However, it can be a complex process and requires a well-planned strategy to achieve the desired benefits. Organizations can modernize applications in many ways, such as platform migration, re-platforming and re-hosting.