Consider These 4 Steps as You Modernize Your Applications

Modernizing existing enterprise applications can ease the transition to a hybrid cloud environment and provide the flexibility to run applications wherever and whenever desired. What follows is a simple four-step approach to consider when embarking on an application modernization journey.

An application modernization journey begins by assessing current applications, identifying those that can be readily deployed in the cloud and those that will require refactoring. After each assessment, evaluate where things stand relative to your organizational goals and budget. Application assessments should identify:

• Traditional applications that can often be in dire need of modernization
• Composite applications or a combination of traditional and cloud-native applications that often need to be continually modernized
• Cloud-native applications that were “born in the cloud” and may need to be updated or modernized

Categorizing provides a breakdown of your application landscape to make decisions about where to focus your efforts.

Create a roadmap and consider modernizing a piece at a time rather than tackling an entire enterprise infrastructure all at once.

An easy place to start moving at an incremental pace is to surround your traditional applications with new and innovative cloud-native services. That will create a low-risk path, but won’t disrupt existing applications and paves the way for innovation and skill development with new programming languages and development methodologies.

As your application-modernization journey moves ahead and you grow comfortable with the technologies, tools and practices involved, you can evaluate packing applications inside containers. This will create greater application portability across the cloud and the ability to perform more frequent software updates by using DevOps methodology practices.

Transitioning applications into containers doesn’t necessarily mean they become truly cloud native as each cloud-native application has a set of microservices representing a logical capability. Each microservice has a well-defined application programming interface (API) that sits on top of it to expose its capability.

Because this approach typically requires changes to the application, it can take longer to complete than simply moving applications into containers. With that consideration in mind, an iterative approach to the process will keep things manageable.

As you prepare to build your business case, keep your scope containable. It’s not advisable to create one massive business case to modernize hundreds of applications all at once, creating a project timeline that could span several years. Rather, contain your initial effort – perhaps to a specific application, or even a specific component of a more complex application.

One of the primary benefits of application modernization is more frequent and higher-quality software deliveries. This can be achieved through an effective DevOps and automation strategy. For example, as your organization increasingly embraces microservices and containers, an industry best practice is to completely automate your build and deployment pipeline. No direct human involvement should be required when building or deploying applications to your application platform.

A DevOps culture will save your team precious time by automating boilerplate tasks and improve quality by doing everything in a repeatable, reliable fashion.

Effective mechanisms for both operating and observing your infrastructure are key tenets for success. In a modern, hybrid-cloud infrastructure, applications consist of virtual machines, containers or some combination of both. This environment should also integrate with other platforms

The ability to manage environments across hybrid multicloud landscapes is a must as well as the need to modernize cloud-native applications and automate end-to-end IT operations. Automation reduces or eliminates the manual effort organizations invest in scaling, provisioning and configuring cloud resources. And automation enables consistent enterprise performance across applications and infrastructure in a hybrid environment, resulting in time and cost savings, faster deployments and a more secure environment.

A modernization project should always be aligned with business priorities so that the value of your efforts can always be clearly articulated.  

After assessing your applications, focus on one that will provide the biggest return on investment (ROI). However, ROI value can vary from enterprise to enterprise, as every business has its own unique opportunities and challenges. For example, an online retailer may need to get a mobile user interface into the hands of its customers as soon as possible, while a financial institution might need to release new versions of a web interface weekly instead of monthly, without sacrificing software quality.

If, along the way, initial assumptions about either the business value or amount of work an application modernization project requires prove incorrect, revisit the business case and adjust the scope accordingly so you don’t find yourself engaged in a never-ending project.

And, as each application modernization project is completed, you’ll have learned a great deal about the technologies, what worked well and what didn’t. You’ll have more DevOps experience and can use that knowledge to inform your next modernization project.

Application modernization is a vital investment in meeting the needs of your customers. Look to IBM Power to accomplish application modernization and ensure all aspects of your business stay up to date and ready to tackle the challenges of a rapidly transforming world.

IBM Power includes high-performance systems and other infrastructure components for supporting data-intensive and mission-critical applications. IBM Power offers a foundation for application modernization and container-based applications of all flavours, including web and middleware, cloud and DevOps, modern programming languages and runtimes, databases, analytics and monitoring.  

IBM Garage sees IBM experts working with customers to generate innovation and accelerate their digital transformation, showing them how best practices and technologies can rapidly turn ideas into business value.

IBM Technology Expert Labs consultants perform infrastructure services online or onsite, offering deep technical expertise, tools and methodologies. These services help solve business challenges, gain new skills and apply best practices.