Modernizing Legacy Applications with Low-Code Automation
United Delta For Information Technology
Your Trusted Transformation Partner
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What is a Legacy System?
A legacy system is a set of computing equipment or software that is no longer supported. The system continues to satisfy the requirements for which it was first intended, but growth is not permitted. A legacy system will only ever do the current tasks for the business.
Legacy is not a life sentence either, and using such tools won't do any harm to your company—in fact, you probably already do. However, there are some circumstances in which it is impossible to avoid taking extreme steps. For instance, given the situation of:
·??????the unreasonably high total cost of ownership
·??????time-consuming maintenance
·??????limited software functionality
·??????poor data protection
·??????violation of regulations
In other words, a business turns to migration if legacy software significantly hinders business growth and/or the effectiveness of the IT department. The shift from a legacy product to a new one created or supported by widespread technology is known as legacy migration. Lift-and-shift migration and business transformation are the two primary types of migration. In the first instance, the IT department starts the legacy migration process. Engineers concluded that some software maintenance is difficult and that using it is a technical bottleneck. The growth of the firm is not significantly hampered by this inconvenience. However, it presents a challenge to perfect operational performance.
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What is the difference between migration and modernization?
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Imagine a situation where part of the legacy app is efficient. But the work or appearance of some components is causing significant difficulties, for example, inconvenient interfaces. Or a company wants to keep the functionality but migrate to a new stack since the product has become difficult to maintain. In this case, it makes no sense to take drastic measures. Here, it is better to recode an app using a modern tech stack, improve an interface, remove inefficient features, and add new ones making software more valuable for the business. If migration is a global process, then modernization is updating the base with new functionality.
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Reasons stopping your organization from moving to a modernized solution
How does the modernization or migration of legacy systems get started? The common strategies used by corporations to cope with legacy systems are listed below, along with some negative effects these strategies may have:
Tearing down and replacing their outdated systems, then installing completely new ones: It can be challenging for businesses that must swiftly pivot to justify the time and money needed for a rip-and-replace strategy when migrating historical systems, and it can be challenging to maintain business operations while completely replacing legacy systems.
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Integrating custom code to make these systems web functional: This strategy connects data and systems through point-to-point integration, so every project an organization undertakes that involves data from a legacy system will use this connection. To expose any pertinent data, they must create fresh point-to-point code. This is a labor-intensive approach to legacy systems that can result in a fragile architecture made up of tightly coupled applications, making it challenging to quickly retire or update current systems.
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*?Interruptions to Business
This is by far the most common reason why company leaders try to stay away from application modernization. Even though they know the variety of advantages which accompany the process of modernization, they fear that such changes may also have bad consequences to their business.?A modernization project is sometimes viewed as a potential threat that will have a damaging impact and will negatively interrupt the business’ life cycle.?Moreover, some people think it might even lead to breaking otherwise operative systems. As a result, that will require investing more money to fix the broken systems.
*?Critical Old Code
Some software developments might be already heavily patched. Since they have established high assurance rates,?rewriting, or converting already implemented logic into a different language is feared to cause various disruptions or obstacles in terms of running everyday tasks in a smooth and error-free way.?What is more, in some cases the old system is a treasure chest containing major investments in the form of efforts, time and resources. Any additional fine-tuning and changes equal even more of these investments. And sometimes there’s simply not enough time to go through all of them for the nth time.
*?Modern Languages are Monolithic
Old programming languages like?COBOL,?Plb,?Fortran?and?Pascal?are among the languages which occupy the “legacy” position.?C++ might also be on the way out any time soon. And yet, despite being somewhat old-fashioned, they are still being sustained for numerous reasons. Old languages might be tick-tocking bombs, but modern languages are monolithic. Companies avoid intensive implementation of the latter because they can be hard to modify and lack the flexibility of their predecessors.?After all, the idea of application modernization is not simply substituting long lines of efficient old code with long lines of not-as-efficient code simply because it is new.
*?Change in the Cultural and Organizational Ecosystem
What is usually the driving force in an organization??A functional ecosystem of experienced developers, of course, who know what they are doing and how they are doing it. When such symbiosis is disrupted, the whole organization risks losing its productivity and profit-delivering practices. Application modernization is seen as a change-driver that will automatically shake the balance in the overall?cultural and organizational milieu. Why??Adopting new pivots and moving to app modernization is expected to call for?a new set of skills.?To gain new skills and get to grips with the fresh methods applied, employers will need to put away cash for trainings, while employees will have to dedicate a huge portion of their time to these trainings. Interestingly and logically enough, small companies are more prone to providing additional courses to personnel than big companies because the number of people to be trained is smaller.?And it’s not that commitment to trainings is a bad thing. It is just that this type of events require time and time is money.
*?Business is Put on Hold
Application modernization delivers two steps forward, but it also may deliver one step back. Between the need for updates and expanded revenues,?many IT company owners may find their businesses on hold, while dealing with application modernization.?Even though this is something temporary, but still there are certain apprehensions involved.?Leaders are concerned with possible slowdown or even profit loss?until all the modernization phases are clarified and everyone gets accustomed to the new procedures and workflow.
*?Going Round in Circles
Finally, there comes the question as to whether modernization is an endless cycle.?Speaking figuratively, it takes much more than running with Nike Air Max 2016 to move with the same tempo as that of the most recent technological developments. The day you manage to upgrade a system, you will be (or maybe you won’t be) surprised to find out that newer requirements and characteristics have already appeared. Which makes your system outdated again. So the process of modernizing your applications begins once more and, thus, goes round in a vicious circle. What a pity, right? Luckily,?contemporary Clouds have an open standard and are built upon not so restricted virtualization platforms. This allows developers to remodel the software more easily, while keeping pace with the rapid advancements in the IT world.
In brief,?core IT business functions continue to be supported by legacy applications based on older technologies.?Even though application modernization stimulates and promises various advantages, not everyone seems to be rushing into it. First, there is the issue of likely business interruptions. Then there is the conviction that?the old code is too critical and cannot be that easily replaced.?Additionally, that conviction is further coupled with the belief that present-day languages are less agile and flexible. And lastly, there are the arguments that such?measures towards upgrading may cause cultural and organizational changes, paused business progress or they can simply lead to a “merry-go-round” game.
The 6-Step Process to Successfully Migrate Your Legacy Application to a modern solution
·??????Conduct a SWOT Analysis.
·??????Assess Your Environment.
·??????Select Your Migration Strategy.
·??????Run a Pilot Migration.
·??????Migrate Your Legacy Application.
·??????Manage Your Cloud Usage and Resources.
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Security Vulnerabilities of Legacy Systems
While legacy systems might work perfectly fine from a user or business perspective, they usually face high security risks. Legacy systems are usually no longer supported by the manufacturer. Therefore, a single vulnerability can be of great risk as attackers can access all application, database, or server information.
This year’s study reports the global average cost of a data breach is up 6.4 percent over the previous year to $3.86 million. The average cost for each lost or stolen record containing sensitive and confidential information also increased by 4.8 percent year over year to $148.
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The Do's and Don'ts
Migrate Your Legacy System to Low Code
While facing all those challenges in running legacy systems, there’s a clear need in migrating those to modernized environments built for the future.
Our solution? Migrate your legacy system to a low-code development platform.
And here’s why we believe that low code can save you from running outdated software:
Low code changes the speed of your software development. This is an absolute necessity when conducting a migration project.
In addition, low-code platforms allow non-developers to participate in the migration project as low-code platforms provide these departments with easy-to-use tools. All in in all, low code allows you to deliver better solutions for your users and your business with a customer-focused, test-and-learn approach. With constant iteration towards optimal outcomes, low code should be your tool of choice for migrating your legacy system.
Let’s take a look in detail.
Step-by-Step Migration to Low Code
When you start migrating your legacy systems, you want to start by migrating simple (non-business critical) applications and work your way towards more complex applications. This provides vital learning, so when it comes to more high-stakes projects, you can minimize the likelihood of making costly mistakes. It also recommended to start migrating parts of your application that no longer meet the business requirements and needs of your end users. This will allow you to see an immediate return on investment and will likely result in management buy-in that allows you to continue with your migration journey.
Migrating your system step by step to a low-code platform is the ideal way of breaking your monolith. Another useful framework to consider when migrating your legacy system is the concept of bimodal IT.
The idea of bimodal IT is simple; you set up your software development into two separate teams. One team is responsible for maintaining your existing application environment (e.g., your legacy system), while the other team is going to develop the new software system.
In a step-by-step migration, those two teams will collaborate closely on making sure that the old system doesn’t break while building up a new environment.
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Integrate Your Legacy System with Low Code
When migrating legacy systems, many companies want to take advantage of the latest technologies, while overlooking those that can integrate with existing systems and services. Low-code platform allows you to preserve your legacy system for a while by making the functionality of your legacy system available to other systems via the REST API. While you might want to keep your core system, a low-code platform allows you to build add-ons or additional applications on top of your legacy system. Imagine – for example – building a mobile application for Android and iOS on top of your existing CRM system.
Reusability of Data Model
Another big plus for migrating to a low-code platform – like Appian, Outsystems or Pega – is the reusability of the existing data model. You can simply reuse the already-in-place data model. This enables you to migrate smoothly as you can start building a new user interface while still running on the same data model.
Develop Your Applications Visually. Anyone can accomplish that.
It may be argued that creating applications visually is a more natural process. A low-code platform can be used by various user groups by using model-driven development techniques to visually design the user interface, logic, and data model. Those groups can easily create native web, mobile, or desktop applications, from developers to citizen developers to senior developers. Users become proficient in the development environment much faster than they would with a conventional language since it is visual and model driven.
You may quickly develop the user interface (UI) for your data model using Appian, Outsystems or Pega as your low-code platform. Users can use low-code development platforms to create a functioning app that you can download, launch, and start using in a few hours or less by combining drag-and-drop user interfaces, form builders, and visual process modeling.