Is it time to modernize your enterprise apps? A field guide

How do you know when it’s time to modernize an application? Rapid changes in the world over the last two years (including COVID-19) are impacting IT profoundly. For many of us, this means accelerating our IT strategies and digital transformation plans to serve a world that’s always-on.

In its simplest form, app modernization is the process of updating an app so that it can be maintained, extended, deployed and managed in a way that allows it to meet current and future decisions. But where does app modernization start for you?

Let’s go through a few best practices for building modern apps in an incremental, safe and economically sound manner. For more detail, you should check out our field guide to application modernization where we will describe the process in full for modernizing with IBM servers as your foundation. We’ll also provide tips to avoid some of the common pitfalls that enterprises fall victim to (such as no clear business value, projects taking too long, vendor lock-in, and more) so that you know what to keep an eye out for as you embark on this journey.

3 Motivations and benefits of modernizing apps

Let’s take a closer look at some of the ways in which modernization can unlock several business and technical benefits for your organization. These advancements— big and small— can have a lasting and positive impact on your organization.

1. Accelerate digital transformation

More than ever, organizations need to find new ways to provide innovative, engaging experiences that satisfy existing customers, attract new ones and gain a competitive edge. A Forrester Consulting study commissioned by IBM on the business value of modernizing applications with IBM and Red Hat® container solutions found that modernization efforts can help accelerate release frequency by up to 10x, improving customer engagement, time-to-market and operations.

2. Gain a superior developer experience

Your organization’s most valuable assets are its people. When it comes to gaining a competitive advantage through IT, you want to ensure your app developers always have the right set of technologies—and the most up-to-date apps—at their fingertips to unleash their creativity and build truly amazing customer experiences.

3. Deploy enterprise apps anywhere in the hybrid cloud

As enterprises further embrace a hybrid cloud strategy, it’s critically important that apps have the flexibility to be deployed anywhere across this landscape to reap the full benefits. This will allow you to leverage the continuous innovation across your hybrid cloud with the security, data privacy and reliability of your own data center. Secure access to your core mission-critical apps and data, with a common set of tools, brings greater value to clients. This choice, flexibility and accessibility are paramount for successful competitive differentiation in today’s market.

The case for modernizing your apps

With a clear sense of the business benefits, it’s time to pick how you go about transforming your applications. Fortunately, we have a field guide for that. What are the best ways to make a business case for the investment?

Check out our Field Guides to Application Modernization on IBM Z and LinuxONE and on IBM Power Systems and build a better case for modernization step by step. Leverage your strengths to make a change now. It’s just not about managing the present or innovating for the future. It’s both.

Source: ibm.com