Questions to ask before planning the app modernization
According to the Market Research Future report, the application modernization services market is expected to reach USD 24.8 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 16.8%. Nobel technologies and improved applications are two driving factors of this growing market size. On one side, it is growing, and on another side, it is failing also. According to this report, unclear project expectations are the biggest reason behind its failure.
That’s why app modernization is a big decision for your organization and business expansion. To avoid failure, you must prepare a list of good questions before planning the app’s modernization. Read the full article to understand a brief of app modernization, its need cum benefits, and questions which could help in designing the best app modernization strategy.
What is App modernization?
App modernization replaces or updates existing software, applications, or IT infrastructure with new applications, platforms, or frameworks. It is like an application upgrade on a period to utilize the technology trends and innovation. The primary purpose of app modernization is to improve the current legacy systems’ efficiency, security, and performance. The process encompasses not only updating or replacing but also reengineering the entire infrastructure.
Need/Benefits of App modernization
Application modernization is growing across industries. It meant it became an essential business need. Here are points which are highlighting that why you need the app modernization for your business:
- To improve the business performance
- To scale the IT infrastructure to work globally
- To increase the security and protection of expensive IT assets
- To enhance the efficiency of business processes and operations
- To reduce the costs which happen due to the incompatibility of older systems with newer technologies
10 Questions need to consider before planning the app modernization
Before designing the add modernization strategy, you need a list of questions according to your business objective and services. Here are questions that might help you to make a proper plan for app modernization:
1. What is the age of your existing legacy business applications?
You have to understand your existing IT infrastructure and resources. How it is working and performing in the current environment. Are they creating problems or running smoothly? Are they causing downtime often? If they are too old, you need to replace everything; although if you upgrade them regularly, check which resource needs to modernize.
2. What are the organization’s current technical skills and resources?
You have to analyze the existing team and experts and understand whether they can adapt to the new infrastructure. You have to know their capabilities regarding learning new applications. In case you did modernization without analyzing your existing team’s capability, but after some time, you find that your experts are facing issues while working on the new IT environment. Thus, knowing the current technical skills and how you would train them for the transformation is good.
3. Would you be willing to conduct a Proof Of Concept (POV) to verify the platform’s functionality?
Are new system features able to solve the problems, and are they beneficial for business? You need to perform POV to check the new system’s functionality and find out how it works. POV can help you to examine the essential features and other characteristics of modernized apps.
4. Can the new system be easily modified to meet the business’s and customers’ changing needs?
Business needs and customer demands are not static. You know it, and it changes as soon as technological advancement or regulatory changes happen. It would be best if you found out that an application would be able to adopt the changes to fulfill your business requirements.
5. How have you surveyed the market and decided on the appropriate platform(s) to execute essential modernization?
You must research the market and list all vendors offering the services you seek for your application modernization. Analyze all factors before finalizing the best platform and services aligned with your objective.
6. How secure are the applications currently?
You have to find the security level of your legacy applications. Because modern apps need high levels and advanced security systems. Old security practices on modern apps might fail your project, so better to check the existing security.
7. Assess the opportunity costs and business risks associated with avoiding modernization?
If you avoid the app modernization, how many business opportunities might you lose, or how many risks might you face? If you escape them, you might face many losses. As discussed, modernization is a business priority in this futuristic technology era. So, be sure to understand its importance on time and execute it as soon as possible.
8. What type of modernization are you seeking?
You need to know the flexibility of your decision regarding app modernization. In simple words, which kind of modernization are you looking for in your business progress? Are you looking for a permanent or a system that could be altered in some years?
9. Did you consider the cloud when designing your application?
Running applications and managing the whole IT infrastructure on the cloud is a business priority. If your legacy applications are not compatible with the cloud, you must understand how you can make them cloud compatible. By doing this, you can easily migrate and modernize your applications to the cloud.
10. Determine what integrations are required to modernize the app?
With modernized applications, you must know the required integrations among hardware, software, or other IT assets. This answer will help you locate the best and ideal platform for your business process execution.
Forbes Councils Member Yasin Altaf has pointed out four factors – evaluate technical and business challenges, assess the current state of the legacy system, find out the right approach, and plan in his recent article. Besides being the leading voice in emerging enterprise technology, Infoworld has also revealed that time and proper tools are key drivers of the app modernization success in this report. In addition, giving time to develop and plan is the best way, according to 36% of IT leaders.
Thus, along with these questions, you must consider factors like time, budget, risk factors, and management constraints before planning the modern app.
Closing Thought
You research, ask questions from various resources, and analyze everything before purchasing anything!
Why?
To get the exemplary product/service!
It applies to app modernisation too. Your business needs modernized applications in the modern technology era. A questionnaire will help you plan an appropriate app modernization if you want the right service and execution. We hope the questions we have provided can help you find answers to all your questions. Interested in modernizing your legacy applications? Contact us. You can always count on our expert team for assistance.