The Challenges and Benefits of Modernizing Legacy Applications in Cloud

The Challenges and Benefits of Modernizing Legacy Applications in Cloud
It was right from its inception that cloud computing displayed a revolutionizing potential—it had an unforeseen scope over diverse targets including individuals, companies and governments. The major services available in these sectors and the ever growing inventions of the modern world do indeed call for a more advanced and flexible application of cloud computing. It is seen by many as the new wave of information technology. In 2010, the World Economic Forum published a report which evaluated the impact of cloud computing technologies and signaled the large potential benefits of adoption, ranging from economic growth and potential improvements in employment to facilitating innovation and collaboration.

Need being the mother of invention, Cloud has evolved beyond basic SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS offerings, as the cloud matures to become the engine of enterprise technology innovation. It is moving towards a faster and more efficient world. However, the Information Technology is increasing its demands to solve the arising complexities. Take for example the modernizing of legacy applications in cloud. It extends both challenges and opportunities, as the facets of a coin, but in each way it moves towards a more advanced and intricate web of complexities.

Most of the large enterprises run at least some form of a legacy application, for which updates and replacements can sometimes be tricky. However, failing to modernize out-of-date systems may hinder the pace of information exchange due to slow runtime speeds and inefficient load balancing. Many organizations have, thus, begun to modernize their legacy applications which will yield long term benefits such as portability and scalability, better speed and resource management, and granular visibility.

Since the start, enterprises have run on time-consuming manual processes and tools that are involved with legacy applications also hinders modernizing efforts. Manual processes take up significant amount of time and still leave room for errors. However, at the same time, enterprises say they need to move to the cloud, but they don’t really understand why, nor do they realize how difficult it can be. This includes applying cloud services to a non-compatible old legacy application and facing challenges when trying to re-host. They must be cautious of the processes involved in migrating the valuable data. If one moves one application to cloud which has business logic or IT logic of another application that isn’t migrated to cloud, they might run into issues. Therefore, it is better to consult the professionals before landing into problems. In this league of advancement, the infrastructure might face challenges such as:

Cost adjustments: The cost of maintaining and upgrading Legacy systems renders the firm a challenge of combatting the financial balance. The challenge preparers the employees learn the skills of pulling the firm through the tight passage without de-establishing the financial pace of the organization.

Inflexible and closed architectures: There are some architectures used by organizations that hinder Web and mobile enabling and integration with contemporary platforms, therefore, they turn out to be challenging opportunities for the modern minds at work.

Limited Integration: Legacy systems might sometimes not go in cohesion with the integration to contemporary technologies like Mobile Apps/Devices, Enterprise Content Management Systems, Automated Workflow, E-Forms/E-Signatures, Geographic Information Systems, and so on, therefore pose a major obstacle for the integrators.

User Friendliness: The existing system uses command-based screens and cannot provide a contemporary Graphical User Interface (GUI), web, or mobile which have become commonplace, however, if it is in constant practice, the newer models of commanding may pose an oddity for quite some time for the old hands. Therefore, the migrators have to go an extra mile to ease the way by employing less complicated systems.

On the other hand, there are various benefits of applying this modernization. If the engineers handle the aforementioned challenges wisely and implement the newer technology with greater precision, there indeed some charming benefits await, such as:

Enhanced flexibility: Creates a flexible IT environment with new architectural paradigms such as web services; aligns IT systems to dynamic business needs.

Modern development tools: Legacy and new developers can use the same or similar tools, enabling both to develop Legacy applications.

Lower risks: Re-use of business rules where data becomes less risky than alternatives.

Shorter development times: Modernizes development tools and retrains developers which lead to shorter development times.

Reduced cost: Lowers high maintenance cost of existing old fashioned Legacy platforms and development tools, resulting in substantial savings in IT budgets.

Minimized disruption: Reduces the risk when modernizing Legacy platforms by combining two decades of development experience with contemporary platforms, a proven modernization framework and rich domain knowledge.

Related Stories

Machine Learning’s Impact on Cloud Computing