Accelerated innovation and time to market
By reducing the time organisations have to spend maintaining apps and infrastructure, app modernisation allows businesses to channel their efforts into innovation.
AppDev or AppMod?
Application Development (AppDev)
Custom web apps are designed specifically to address your unique needs and challenges allowing you to optimise your workflows and processes, integrate existing systems and data sources and implement features that align with your business strategy.
Application Modernisation (AppMod)
Application modernisation could be essential for your business operations to grow, scale, transform and modernise existing applications. Enhanced efficiencies and the benefits of modernisation will only come from the right business-centric approach and strategy from the outset.
Get in touch with our team of experts to find out more about our application development services.
What is Application Development (AppDev)?
If off-the-shelf applications aren’t quite giving you what you need, you might want to consider using custom mobile or web application development services.. This will give you tailored software solutions which specifically address your unique needs and challenges.
By introducing a customised web app, you will be able to streamline business processes, integrate data sources and optimise operations to give customers and employees a more refined online experience.
With a custom web app (instead of an off-the-shelf app), you benefit from enhanced security and control, greater scalability and flexibility, a tailored solution and long-term cost-effectiveness.
What Is Application Modernisation (AppMod)?
Application modernisation is the process of taking existing legacy applications and modernising their platform infrastructure, internal architecture, and their underlying development code as well as the user experience and its features.
When we talk about application modernisation today, the discussion tends to focus on monolithic on-premises applications (often these are outdated and maintained using waterfall development processes). While these traditional development processes are too slow and complicated to iterate, the key is how these can be brought into cloud architecture and release patterns, namely microservices DevOps.
By tackling the monolith and breaking it down into microservices DevOps frameworks, you can increase the velocity of new feature deployments, enhance efficiencies, re-imagine existing workflows and user experiences.
Why is Application Modernisation essential for your business?
There are three common limiting issues found in traditional IT, the combination of which is driving the desire to modernise monolithic applications.
Firstly, monolithic apps are difficult to update. Secondly, they are difficult and expensive to scale. And thirdly they are more than likely providing your users with a poor user experience.
Update Difficulties
Monolithic apps may be difficult to update due to their embedded architecture. If all of an application’s components are shipped together, adding features becomes problematic and costly due to the complexity of the architecture and the challenge of retrospective integration and the need to regression test a large part of the application rather than focussed testing on just the elements that have changed.
Scaling Problems
Software architecture factors also play a part in limiting the scalability of a legacy app. If just one component of an app is facing load and performance challenges, it can become necessary to scale up the entire app even if only the most-demanding single component is struggling to perform. This could potentially lead to considerable wastage, time and expense.
By modernising your applications, you will benefit from:
- Increased agility and speed to market
- Improved customer/ user experience
- Enhanced security features
- Reduced maintenance costs
- Better productivity and efficiency
- Better data management and decision-making
How does Application Modernisation work?
If you are starting from scratch, custom web application development will serve you well, giving you an app that precisely meets your business needs and takes advantage of cloud native approaches. But if you have legacy apps that are mostly fit for purpose, but could do with some streamlining, then application modernisation could be the best way forward.
Application modernisation works by modernising your pre-existing apps. More often than not, it’s best to modernise these apps in stages. For example, many businesses start by moving their apps from their on-premises data centres to the cloud in what’s known as a “lift and shift” migration. This allows them to take immediate advantage of the most basic benefits of cloud computing.
From here, businesses can move onto more advanced modernisation techniques, such as rebuilding all or some of the parts of their apps to adopt best practices and get on the journey to being more cloud native.
Challenges
While the cost and complexity of updating monolithic applications is a key driver, these same factors can also prove key challenges and barriers impacting your approach to application modernisation.
Simply lifting and shifting all legacy applications to the cloud is difficult to justify, especially when you have already made a significant investment in on-premises infrastructure unless it’s becoming end of life. The true value of modernisation is found in restructuring the application to take better advantage of cloud models.
Adopt Microservices Architecture
When an application is modernised to a microservices architecture, often using container technology, components will be smaller and loosely coupled. This brings the distinct advantage of deploying and scaling independently of each other. For many, this is the true value of application modernisation.
Learn more about your journey to the cloud.
The key to success
Take stock of your existing IT infrastructure. And most importantly question where you will get the most value from application modernisation. Evaluate how critical the application is to the customer/user experience and the future of your business.
Taking an inventory of what you have is arguably the most obvious place to start. Qualify each of these applications in terms of the difficulty and cost of modernisation, with the value of modernisation.
Those that are high value and low effort to modernise, will be a no-brainer. This is where you should begin your application modernisation project. The difficult decisions come with those that present significant challenges but would offer crucial value if modernised.
But remember, it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing strategy from the very beginning. The project can be done strategically and in stages. Learn more about your journey to the cloud.
Benefits of custom web application development
Further benefits of custom web application development include:
Compatibility and agility
Modernising your apps means they will be able to work with the most current technology. Essentially, they’ll keep working even as the technology evolves.
Security and reliability
A cloud-first approach allows organisations to access built-in updating and security capabilities.
Efficiency
When carried out correctly, it can be easier to modernise existing apps rather than creating new ones from scratch.
Choosing the right approach
Having run a full audit of your existing applications and by understanding the potential value of modernisation it is important to choose the right approach. This could consist of:
- Monolith to microservices: Refactor and break a monolithic application into a collection of small, loosely coupled microservices.
- Cloud migration: Restructure the application to take better advantage of cloud native approaches, often by leveraging containers. This could consist of private cloud, public cloud or a combination of the two with hybrid cloud.
- Exposing functionality via APIs: Leave an application in place but exposing its functions securely via APIs. This is based on integration and extending the application rather than migration, enabling new cloud-native applications to take advantage of the capabilities of existing systems and data.
As industry experts, DeeperThanBlue provides a full consultative model for your application modernisation journey. We have access to a full market range of cloud environments to suit the specific needs and requirements of your business. If you’re keen to learn more, please get in touch today.
Application Modernisation Technologies
An essential aspect of a strategic approach to application modernisation is to understand and opt for the best technologies to facilitate your journey to the cloud.
Private, Hybrid and Multi-Cloud
Of course, the public cloud will be a critical part of your application modernisation strategy, but that doesn’t mean that private, hybrid and multi-cloud strategies don’t have their part to play. In fact they are essential for security, latency and architectural reasons.
If, for example, you aren’t ready to go straight to the public cloud, other cloud models can help solve any complexities with where certain workloads need to be housed depending on their unique characteristics and considerations for any regulatory or compliance implications.
Containers and Kubernetes
The implementation of containers and Kubernetes is now one of the main enablers in hybrid cloud and application modernisation strategies.
Containerisation enables an application to be packaged in consistent, lightweight ways that they can run consistently across desktop, cloud, or on-premises environments.
As a result, your developers can create and deploy applications faster and more securely.
Applications built around container-based architecture can be written once and can run anywhere, promising such benefits as fault isolation, self-healing, ease of management and security for example.
Containers also add the benefits of rapid scaling–up or down–by automatically adding or removing containers based on demand, so apps only use the resources necessary to function effectively. You can also isolate intensive processes/ tasks so that they have their own dedicated resource and don’t impact the rest of the applications performance.
API Management
API management is vital for the future of your organisation. Distributing, controlling and analysing the APIs that connect applications and data across your business and across clouds is fundamental for the growth, flexibility and agility of your business.
Without structured API management, you simply wouldn’t be able to respond to the rapid changes in consumer demand or have the agility to grow and scale in line with market forces. Learn more about API management and the essential metrics for success.
Our Work
App Modernisation and Development Success Stories
Custom Web Application Development With DeeperThanBlue
As industry experts, DeeperThanBlue provides a full consultative model for your application modernisation journey. We have access to a full market range of cloud environments to suit the specific needs and requirements of your business.
If you’re keen to lean more, please get in touch today.
+44 (0)114 399 2820
Get in touch
App Modernisation FAQs
What Does App Modernisation Mean?
App Modernisation is the act of updating organisational processes, systems and tools to the most current versions or best practices. When it comes to cloud commuting, modernisation refers to the process of transitioning an organisation’s applications, processes and data-management to a cloud-first and cloud native approach.
What Is Legacy Modernisation?
“Legacy modernisation” is just another way of saying “application modernisation.” However, both older and newer apps can be modernised with cloud technology to achieve greater agility, stability, and innovation.
What are some challenges in application modernisation?
While modernising legacy applications makes business sense, you should be aware of some of the challenges you might face.
Modernisation projects can be quite complex, and hence initial costs can be high. We are, however, confident that this initial outlay will be recouped in savings made throughout the lifetime of the updated app. Another key benefit is being able to accelerate your product development roadmaps with a higher cadence of software releases.
You might also face resistance to change from within your organisation, on technical, operational and financial fronts. With our support, you should be able to counter these objections with reasoned arguments. We can provide assistance with your business justification and predicted return on investment.
There may also be concerns about maintaining data integrity and security during the transition from the legacy app to the new version. We would recommend a gradual transition, where we migrate less critical workloads first, gaining experience before moving core systems.
What Are Some Application Modernisation Strategies?
App modernisation strategies should be designed to support an organisation’s modernisation goals. Luckily, the Azure Well-Architected Framework lays out 5 pillars that work towards these goals:
- Reliability: The ability of a system to recover from failures and continue to function.
- Security: Protecting applications and data from threats.
- Cost optimisation: Managing costs to maximise the value delivered.
- Operational excellence: Operations processes that keep a system running in production.
- Performance efficiency: The ability of a system to adapt to changes in load.
What are Containers and Kubernetes?
Containerisation is the process of packaging portions of software code and all its dependencies into ‘lightweight’ discrete units enabling them to run uniformly and consistently on any infrastructure. These containers share a machine’s operating system kernel and so don’t require the overhead associated with running an operating system for each application.
They are inherently smaller in capacity than a virtual machine (VM) and require less start-up time. What this means is that far more containers can be run on the same compute capacity as a single VM. Higher server efficiencies will be found, therefore reducing server and licensing costs.
With containerisation, applications can be written once and can run anywhere, promising such benefits as fault isolation, ease of management and security for example.
Much of the acceleration of containerisation as a viable aspect of any application modernisation strategy has been enabled by the emergence of the open source Docker Engine. Docker enables developers to package applications easily into containers, making it easier, simpler and safer to build, deploy and manage containers. The best way to think of Docker is as a toolkit to enable your developers to build, deploy, run, update and stop containers using simple commands and essential automation.
Kubernetes (K8s) is an open-source container orchestration platform designed to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerised applications. Originally developed by Google, Kubernetes enables users to manage complex applications composed of multiple containers across a cluster of machines, whether they are physical or virtual. It provides features such as automated rollouts and rollbacks, self-healing capabilities for containers, and efficient resource management through intelligent scheduling. By abstracting the underlying infrastructure, Kubernetes allows developers to focus on application development rather than the intricacies of managing individual containers, thus enhancing scalability and reliability in cloud-native environments.
How Much Does Custom Web Application Development Cost?
This depends on the scope, technologies and level of modernisation required. At DeeperThanBlue, we offer a comprehensive assessment and quote based on your unique requirements.
How Long Does Custom Web Application Development Take?
The duration of any application development or modernisation project will vary depending on the scope and complexity of the work required. Some projects may take a few months, while others could span several years. We will work with you to understand your current situation and ambitions for the project before developing a roadmap and defining a timeline for project delivery.
Can You Modernise Applications Built With Outdated Technologies?
Yes. We can modernise applications built with legacy technologies. Our team of experts will evaluate your current system and suggest the best solutions going forward, whether that’s refactoring code, creating API endpoints, migrating to the cloud or integrating modern tools to enhance performance.
How Do I Know If My Application Needs Modernisation?
Here are some signs that your application may need modernisation:
- Restricting ambition: Legacy systems are limiting scalability and hindering business growth
- Performance Issues: Sluggish or unresponsive application.
- High Maintenance Costs: Excessive time and resources spent on maintenance.
- Incompatibility: Trouble integrating with new technologies or platforms.
- Security Risks: Outdated security protocols or vulnerabilities.
- User Complaints: Poor user experience or outdated interfaces.