These days, almost all businesses depend on apps in one form or another. Those who don’t are unlikely to survive the competitive challenges of the digital age.
However, simply running an app is not enough to succeed. Many companies face today because they are using outdated apps created for another world and are now not very helpful to their users. Moreover, the flexibility of these applications is so negligible that they cannot integrate with the systems of the digital age. And that, by the way, is exactly what they should be doing.
Fortunately, the urgent need for seamless, high-performance internal processes can be solved with application modernization.
What is app modernization?
In a nutshell, application modernization is transforming a legacy application to meet the organization’s requirements better.
There are various options for application modernization, ranging from a relatively simple re-hosting to a complete rebuild.
Deciding which approach to take and finding a reliable vendor takes some time, but it’s worth it.
Why invest in app upgrades?
Optimizing operating costs is perhaps one of the most significant incentives to modernize business applications. Today, more and more companies are moving to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model because it allows them to host their applications centrally on a subscription basis. This approach tends to be very attractive to many companies because they get access to a host of new features, and they also get rid of the burden of keeping their applications up and running 24/7.
Here we’ll list the most significant reasons how app modernization can help businesses:
Overcoming compatibility issues
Many applications still rely on archaic infrastructure, outdated software code or operating systems, and sometimes people who can no longer support them. Consequently, it takes many resources to make these old-fashioned applications compatible with new technologies, modules, and tools. Another important detail we often forget is that time spares no one like everything else, applications age on an ongoing basis. Would you mind not fooling yourself into thinking that at some point, your app can’t become “older,” because it can and definitely will? And while applications inexorably age, the effort involved in transforming them into new and more efficient ones inevitably grow along with the process’s cost.
Addressing integration and scalability issues
Legacy applications are often difficult to change and expand to more excellent capabilities due to an outdated technology stack and overly complex internal architecture. Minor upgrades can lead to numerous conflicts in the system. If even one component of an application has load and performance issues, it may be necessary to scale the entire application to serve that single component. Since such a process requires a lot of time and effort from the IT team, needless to say, adding even the most minor feature to your application will be a massive waste of money. Therefore, your application should handle integrations in a way that doesn’t disrupt your processes.
Contribute to the satisfaction of your employees
A good employee is satisfied with their work. Many things contribute to employee satisfaction. However, dealing with outdated applications is just one of them. People don’t want to stay with a company that insists on maintaining the status quo. So instead of working with user-unfriendly technology that doesn’t consider the latest UX/UI standards or device features, some employees are likely to seek better opportunities at other companies. The rest, meanwhile, will try to effectively use outdated and clunky apps, which can slow things down considerably.
Making your apps fit for the future
Modernizing your applications can be the first step for your company to adopt cloud technology.
Legacy applications cannot function properly in the cloud, which eventually leads to ever-increasing performance problems rather than solutions for your business – issues that your IT team will have to solve instead of focusing on more important matters.
This way, before you spend a lot of money on nothing, you should make your apps cloud-ready and let your business take advantage of all the opportunities that the cloud environment offers.
Improving decision-making through innovation
Meeting the needs of today’s businesses is hardly possible without the use of real-time data. Application modernization solves this problem by installing analytics in the application to operate on information or KPIs when needed.
Increase Agility
Business success depends on how quickly you can respond to market challenges and how long it takes you to adopt new technologies. Upgrading opens up several opportunities for the team to improve efficiency. For example, they will have access to the system from anywhere, anytime. In addition, with an upgraded system, you can develop and launch new products faster than ever before. Finally, scaling up and maintaining agility is not just an important but the only possible way to win customer loyalty and gain a competitive edge.
Unlocking hidden value
Once upgraded, legacy applications can adequately operate in today’s digital ecosystem. In addition, you’ll gain new opportunities to unlock the value of data analysis and workflow by interacting with artificial intelligence (AI) and other revolutionary tools. Whether you use them or not is up to you, but isn’t it nice to have an ace up your sleeve?
Since cutting-edge technology has settled into literally every pocket, we don’t have a chance or an opportunity to ignore it because the moment we do, we’ll be squeezed out by more advanced competitors.
Business applications need to keep up with technological changes and easily incorporate the latest and most significant features to help run your business effectively.
