Insights

How to reduce costs of application modernization initiatives

Application modernization is an important tool for any modern organization looking to compete in today’s rapidly changing world. Companies sitting on legacy technology and drowning in technical debt can turn to application modernization to transform their businesses.

As companies increasingly understand and embrace digital transformation, there are concerns about costs. While investing in application modernization initiatives, they can follow a few rules to ensure that costs remain in check.

Key takeaways

• While application modernization initiatives incur costs, they do not need to spiral out of control
• Companies with large amounts of technical debt will find it an impediment to a speedy transformation
• The easiest way to ensure costs remain in check is to work with a trusted partner that uses platform-led services
• Application modernization is as much an organizational shift as it is a technological one. Initiatives with executive support and organizational-wide buy-in are more likely to succeed than without.

Why application modernization costs can spiral out of control

Application modernization initiatives can suffer from the high cost of rework due to certain issues. These include:

• Large amounts of technical debt : The more course correction any application modernization initiative requires, the more costs are associated with it. While the only way to clear technical debt is to begin addressing it, it’s important to understand that removing it will take time and resources.
• Deficient quality engineering practices : By design, application modernization initiatives require understanding the current technology landscape and roadmap. If documentation of existing tools and practices is poor, it will take longer and require more resources to address.
• Immature DevOps/DevSecOps practices : If the processes and tools that enable development delivery at pace are substandard, any application modernization effort will stall and drive up costs. Application modernization benefits from established DevOps and DevSecOps, as a foundation to refractor, rearchitect, or otherwise address legacy systems.
• Lack of expertise: Many companies do not currently have the staff to manage a comprehensive transformation. This is why most successful application modernization initiatives involve working with a trusted partner who can provide customized solutions while remaining technology agnostic.

How to reduce costs of application modernization

1. Shift-Left: One key approach is “shift-left,” which means testing early and often through the process. Historically, quality assurance (QA) would occur at the end of a production cycle, when a product or tool was ready for release.
2. Getting things right, right away: You need a partner who has the experience to do it correctly the first time to reduce the solution’s cost significantly.
3. Platform-led services: There are no shortcuts when conducting application modernization. But you can rely on the experience of the right partner, who has developed high-quality reusable components, to usher in major initiatives more quickly.
4. Inspire the collective team: Application modernization is more than a technological initiative. It requires a collective buy-in from every department, as application modernization spurs a revolution in agility and productivity within all teams.
5. Embrace microservices: Microservices use multiple autonomous, self-contained services that interact over well-defined application programming interfaces. Individual microservices can be changed without impacting any other parts of the application. It is an agile way to manage new applications.
6. Reduce technical debt: At least some technical debt is expected for virtually every organization. It arises when development teams take shortcuts and pursue quick fixes to technology to get it back online or meet temporary specifications. Some technical debt is acceptable. Left unaddressed, it can overwhelm a company and create significant bottlenecks.
7. Cut down on outdated QA techniques: The shift-left and scaffolding technique introduces testing early, which provides teams with the ability to course-correct sooner. Instead of waiting at the end of a development cycle to see if the application is up to standards, moving to test and QA early solves issues and identifies improvements well before the last minute. Application modernization enables organizations to rapidly develop, test and launch new applications, processes and workflows.
8. Eliminating unnecessary complexity : One reason technical debt can be so costly is that years of inefficient or substandard code increase the chances of something going wrong, taking down entire application suits. Modernization (whether through refactoring, replacing, removing, or any of the other nine Rs) introduces simplicity and creates a brand new, modern approach.
9. Increasing transparency : Modern applications provide greater visibility, either through being built via low-code/no-code or through new dashboards that can automate activity and monitoring. This is especially true if you use a platform with automated workflow.

How UST can help

UST offers full lifecycle cloud application modernization consulting and development services. Our comprehensive suite of platforms, methodology and services, fine-tuned over two decades, helps companies save costs at every stage of their modernization journey.

We can help by providing recommendations on how your company can better manage and optimize its current application portfolio. Our experts offer insights and guidance to align your business goals with modernization goals. They also suggest strategies and solutions to help solve your primary challenges and actions you can take to get started right away. Click here to learn more about our approach.