Application modernization allows today’s organizations to stay competitive by updating their apps and data to keep pace with shifting business needs. As markets and technology advance, companies who don’t evolve risk falling behind, while those who pursue innovation thrive. A recent survey published by our partner, Red Hat, revealed that companies and their leaders recognize this, with 95% of respondents stating that they believe application modernization is essential for their organization’s success.

While most businesses would agree about the value of application modernization, their journeys will all look different, since every organization starts with its own set of legacy applications and unique business objectives. Though one size rarely fits all, there are several key technologies that improve application performance, security, and scalability. 

Cloud services

The distributed nature of modern organizations makes moving to cloud services a logical step that improves accessibility and offers a host of other benefits, including scalability, enhanced security, and reliability. 

There are several cloud models to choose from depending on an organization’s existing architecture and its policies about where different workloads must be stored. Choosing the right model between private, hybrid, edge, and multi-cloud is the first step in a successful transition to the cloud.

When it comes to cloud services, organizations can rely on the big three providers–Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform–to offer the service levels they expect. Services from other players, like IBM Cloud, are worth exploring for organizations that have unique requirements. 

Containers

In many organizations, legacy applications were built using a monolithic architecture that makes them restrictive and time-consuming to update. With technology and market demands changing rapidly, organizations are shifting to a microservices architecture that deconstructs applications into services that can be deployed independently. More significantly, these services can be updated without the need to modify entire applications, reducing outages and bugs, and speeding the time to market. Containers facilitate this microservices model and, coupled with automation, allow applications to be built in a lightweight and consistent manner that can run across on-premise and cloud environments. 

Organizations shifting to a microservices architecture often leverage Kubernetes platforms, like Red Hat OpenShift, to deploy containers quickly and manage them efficiently. One of the great advantages a platform like Kubernetes is that it makes it possible to automate the deployment of containers, making the process efficient and the results consistent. 

Automation and orchestration

The volume of work associated with managing legacy applications manually makes it difficult for many organizations to keep up, much less innovate. By modernizing these legacy applications and the tech stack that surrounds them, these organizations can integrate powerful automation and orchestration tools like Hashicorp Terraform, Red Hat Ansible, and GitLab Pipelines, to name a few. 

With these tools in place, employees can focus on innovation and higher-level work, speeding the time to market for new strategic initiatives.

Machine learning

Machine learning (ML) has emerged as a critical technology for competing in today’s fast-paced markets and the proof is in the numbers. In 2021, the global machine learning market was valued at $15.44 billion, growing to $21.17 billion in 2022 according to figures in an article published by Forbes. By 2030, it is forecasted to reach $209.91 billion.

Organizations are investing in machine learning for a wide range of use cases. Improving the customer experience using ML tools that facilitate sentiment analysis is just one prominent example. Internally, machine learning allows enterprises to identify opportunities to monetize and draw better business intelligence from data generated at the core of the business. 

Data analytics

Today’s enterprises generate an incredible amount of data in their day-to-day operations. To get the most out of this, they need robust analytics tools, which can be built right into applications during modernization initiatives. Alternatively, custom analytical features, reports, and dashboards can be built as stand-alone solutions that work alongside legacy applications. These tools make it possible to gain valuable insights from the data generated without disrupting the course of regular operations with a more involved modernization project.

Application and data integration

While data analysis is important, some organizations might also benefit from enabling applications to make use of data they might not have been designed to access or process. Depending on their unique architecture and requirements, there are two ways organizations can achieve this. One option is to use data integration, which enables an application to use data that it wasn’t originally designed for. The second is application integration, which allows applications to talk to each other to exchange data they previously couldn’t share. These custom integrations allow organizations to get more value out of their data and deeper functionality from their applications. 

Playing an important role in application and data integration, tools like MongoDB make it easy to model, store, and access unstructured data in a flexible, easy-to-change format using a single platform.

APIs

APIs, or application programming interfaces, represent yet another way to extend the functionality of existing applications. A set of rules and protocols that allow applications to communicate with one another, APIs offer two key ways to extend app functionality. On one hand, an organization can build an API to modify or add a service to an existing application. A couple of common examples include serving data to another application via API or accepting commands.

On the other hand, APIs that are built into third party applications can be used to allow an app to consume data produced by another application.

While using APIs is a powerful way to extend the functionality of existing applications, it’s worth nothing that they’re not all created equal from a security standpoint. Therefore, evaluating the cybersecurity measures built into an API during the consideration process is a critical step in protecting an organization’s data and applications. 

Application security

The security landscape is changing rapidly, and new threats emerge daily. In response, organizations must take a more proactive approach when it comes to cybersecurity. In fact, security isn’t only a tool in application modernization, it’s also a key driver.  

For enterprises that prioritize security, Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC) has become the best practice standard. Using an SSDLC approach, security testing is incorporated across every stage of development, from planning to design, build, release, maintenance, and finally replacement or retirement of the application. 

Security automation supports SSDLC by simplifying secure development, monitoring, event management, and threat mitigation tasks. Popular solutions used for SSDLC include Snyk, Checkmarx, and Sonatype.

Taking the first steps toward application modernization

This list offers a look at the most common technologies used in application modernization. However, every application modernization initiative is different and calls for its own mix of solutions. Selecting the right ones starts with a deep understanding of the organization’s challenges, needs, and strategic objectives. From there, it becomes much clearer where existing applications fall short and what an appropriate roadmap to modernization might look like. 

This process will be straightforward for organizations with a handful of applications. However, those with many applications will need to create a thorough inventory of existing applications and prioritize updates based on their strategic goals. We call this process application rationalization and it’s the first step to modernization for complex organizations, helping them to manage costs and resources. 

With so many technology vendors and solutions on the market, it's essential to evaluate all the options, too. In some cases, popular solutions might be the right way forward. In others, it may be worthwhile to consider less well-known ones or a custom combination of several solutions.  

Leaning on the expertise of a strong business transformation partner can help an organization determine its best path to modernization, selecting key technologies and best-fit vendors. 

Ready to start on your application modernization journey? Talk to one of our experts!