A majority of the IT services spend today goes towards keeping the lights on- maintaining existing enterprise applications, keeping systems in shape, and taking care of software that is critical to the business- no matter how obsolete they get.
Moving legacy systems to modern infrastructure look promising to IT enterprises as it means reducing IT spend, optimizing processes and resources. It utilizes everything available to its full potential.
Modernizing IT through agile methodologies can speed up the provision of IT services by 30-50%, according to McKinsey.
For IT teams looking to rapidly develop their mobile, cloud, and web capabilities, legacy application modernization becomes critical. As technologies advance and businesses evolve, legacy systems start being a bottleneck to growth instead of drivers of growth.
Let’s look at how integration can help modernize legacy systems.
As applications age, their maintenance costs increase. It gets increasingly difficult to add new code to them and update the existing documentation. The inefficiency, limited visibility, and inflexibility of outdated software becomes a liability. This is where companies can turn to modernization.
Legacy modernization can happen in one of the following four ways:
Total transformation – This is where everything obsolete is shown the bin. As a business discards old technology, it rebuilds functionalities on new platforms. This approach might sound expensive to a lot of businesses.
Gradual replacement – This is a component-by-component approach to modernization where businesses gradually automate, digitize, and modernize parts of their business.
Duct tape approach – This is where companies use small fixes here and there to amend things on the verge of breaking.
Improve existing – Here, integrations and redesigning allow companies to improve upon the existing capabilities, without causing a lot of internal disruption to operations.
Naturally, integrations make for a cost-effective approach to legacy modernization, given any business can go on using legacy functionality as usual, while utilizing APIs to leverage cloud capabilities, for instance.
Modernization of legacy systems can become as easy as lifting a finger by using API-led connectivity that exposes underlying functionality while hiding the complexity. By adding an abstraction layer, APIs eliminate any tight coupling between applications and systems, facilitating a smoother shift to new and latest technologies.
If you are wondering how APIs and microservices can help you in the modernization journey, Acuvate’s specialists can assist. We make integration work for you. Explore MuleSoft’s services and offerings to enable integration, digitization, and modernization.
Jagan Jami is the COO @ Acuvate Software. He heads the delivery unit at Acuvate which had delivered 100+ intranets to companies across the globe. Jagan has been working with global CIOs and other business heads and consulted them on Intranet evolution and current trends.
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Jagan Jami