Its goal is to make outdated apps more effective through different application modernization approaches so they can better adapt to turbulent business environments, like that of Britain.
To understand the scope of the country’s innovation potential, consider this: According to Statista, just one innovative field, machine learning, is expected to quintuple in size by 2030. Consumer behavior in this highly digitalized society is also changing. People want faster, more technological and more connected products.
In such conditions, the transition to more modern technologies becomes an existential necessity. This article will look at application modernization in the UK, its drivers and approaches.
Key drivers for application modernization in the UK
Today’s best companies are faster, smarter and more innovative than their competition.
In the pursuit of higher productivity and profits, they never stop developing new ways to improve technology performance, improve customer experience and accelerate time to market.
Yet while leaders push technological evolution forward, others lag behind with rigid, outdated apps that make any change difficult, slow, and expensive.
To understand why application modernization is so important, we look at the key features of the UK’s digital environment and explain why they are the main drivers of change.
- Digital transformation initiatives: Two out of three companies are going through a digital transformation (DX) phase. Effective DX requires changes at all levels, including platform and network (cloud adoption), more flexible processes (DevOps), and a shift to a digital mindset (agile work culture). These efforts allow companies to better react to changes in consumer demand and progressive market development. Avoiding them will slow down any initiative of a company using outdated legacy apps.
- Growing demand for cloud adoption: Thanks to its flexibility, scalability, and cost-saving opportunities, the cloud today has the highest adoption rate among emerging technologies, with nearly everyone (90% of businesses) using it. It leaves companies with rigid legacy applications behind, unable to compete with more innovative competitors. Therefore, transforming the core of legacy applications to make them cloud-friendly or cloud-first is a necessity.
- Regulatory compliance and safety: Legacy applications often belong to the pre-GDPR era. They have neither the technological potential to comply with privacy regulations nor withstand increased security risks. Three out of four people already believe that data privacy is a fundamental human right that deserves to be protected. The expected outcome is that more laws such as GDPR and AI Act will appear in the future. Making applications compliant with compliance through modernization will always prepare your business to stay on track with compliance.
- Improved user expectations: Today’s customers want websites to intuitively know what they want, prefer social media to shop, abandon a website if it loads for more than a second, and are willing to abandon a car for one with a more sophisticated voice control. Some would ask ChatGPT to recommend brands and others would use AI to select items to purchase. User behavior is changing rapidly and their expectations are becoming more demanding. If an application doesn’t hold up, it’s doomed to fail.
- Operational efficiency and cost reduction: Older applications are often ineffective and expensive, while modernization brings significant savings. When Swiss International Air Lines incorporated artificial intelligence into its flight management system to better adapt flights to weather conditions, it saved $5.4 million in one year. Heathrow Airport simplifies the passenger experience and improves flight planning also with artificial intelligence, which helps reduce expenses and optimize operations, making the business more profitable.
- Competitive pressure: Various brands, large and small, are rushing to surpass their competitors in terms of technical excellence. Modern banks are exploring new fintech solutions, robotaxis are making their way onto the streets, and new programming languages appear to be creating super-fast applications. It is not necessary to win the race to be popular, but technical modernization is necessary to stay there.
- Integration with new technologies: The adoption of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and IoT, has become a new normal in the modern business world, allowing companies to tune in by improving technical integrability with new types of technology in I arrive.
- Support for remote and hybrid working: One in five people already work remotely and even more would like to do the same at least part of the time. As remote and hybrid working is a growing trend, companies should improve their internal systems to ensure uninterrupted operations under these conditions, including better security, connectivity, a more user-friendly interface and flexibility of applications to run from different devices.
- Scalability and flexibility: Market conditions can change rapidly, as they did during the pandemic. Therefore, companies should be ready to expand vertically and horizontally to conserve resources, save money and be ready for any challenges. The insertion of new technologies into traditional applications will ensure a reactive or, sometimes, proactive response to market challenges.
- Innovation and growth: Since innovation is a continuous process, application modernization allows a system to evolve seamlessly without disrupting operations. This is critical in today’s business environment, where an innovative company like Allica Bank can develop from a simple startup to the fastest growing company in a country in just a couple of years.
If any of these are responsible for carrying out your app modernization efforts, you will benefit from each of the ten aspects if you carry them out successfully. Let’s take a closer look at how to do modernization effectively.
Strategies and approaches for successful application modernization
What distinguishes a successful modernization from a failed modernization?
In short, it’s the right strategy, approach and careful planning. Let’s discuss these points in more detail and visualize the modernization process in practice.
Modernization begins with a plan, which includes the following steps:
- Audit and evaluation: during which you identify the critical points of the system, evaluate the scope of the work and establish priorities based on the current financial and operational capabilities of your company.
- Risk mitigation: identify potential risks (possible downtime, data loss, lack of knowledge or talent to complete modernization) and devise a strategy to mitigate them)
- Choose the right strategy and the right approach: You should decide first what your business needs, such as a simple rehosting or a complete rebuild, and make sure all systems continue to work.
- Testing and validation: In this phase, re-evaluate the already modernized system, eliminate malfunctions and decide on further modernization if necessary.
During the planning phase, among other things, define the app modernization approach you will use. It will depend on the level of change you need and the end goals you want to achieve. The modernization approach will define the amount of work to be undertaken. As mentioned, there are several approaches to application modernization, including:
Rehosting It is the fastest modernization method and requires almost no code changes. Simply remove your application from its current environment and place it on a new hosting platform.
Replatform it is the next phase after rehosting. It requires some code changes so that the platform can run on the cloud.
Refactoring—This approach simplifies connecting apps and makes the most of the cloud-first environment, so it requires a few more code changes than Replatforming.
Rearchitecture – The structure and functionality of the act are significantly changed to better suit.
Reconstruction – assumes rebuilding the app using newer solutions.
Choosing the right approach is an important part of building an effective strategy that ensures seamless modernization of business processes.
Other aspects include attention to safety so that your system does not remain vulnerable during modernization, careful cost management optimize the value delivered, uninterrupted operations to avoid unnecessary losses during modernization and efficient performance to support productivity during load changes.
By moving from thorough analysis to testing without breaches, reduced efficiency, or additional costs, you may consider your application modernization goals accomplished. In the next phase, you’ll move on to validating your expectations and reaping the benefits of a modernized system.
About the author:
Iurii Luchaninov is a Solution Architect at MobiDev, responsible for providing software modernization consulting services focused on innovation and business objectives.