Three trends in modernising legacy systems

It is a widely accepted fact that government departments, agencies and peripheral organisations are often slow to modernise their technology. Citizen expectations change constantly, budgets are tight, shifting priorities must be accounted for. To successfully transform, a government must consider a holistic change across departments, taking into account the overall experience of their constituents and the various technologies available to help achieve these goals.

A major part of this modernisation has been to replace old, legacy systems with modern solutions.

For many years, legacy modernisation was a black or white affair: either rip out all the old technology and start afresh or make do with it, layering new technology onto old to extend its useful lifetime. Afraid of the risks of the first option, most IT departments and government decision-makers opted for the second, for better or worse.

However, since technology has improved dramatically in recent times, there are now a much wider range of options available to decision-makers. Coupled with the after-effects of the pandemic, whereby employees have become accustomed to more flexible working arrangements and remote work, there is simply no way a government department can continue using aging legacy technology.

Falling into the ‘lift and shift’ way of thinking about modernisation is a false solution. Governments must look to key modern technologies like cloud computing, DevOps, and high-performance low-code platforms to keep critical processes and systems running whilst providing important upgrades to bring technology up to the level that citizens expect.

In reality, the word ‘legacy’ refers to the amount of technical debt a particular piece of technology has — in other words, how expensive and difficult it would be to resolve any of the issues it has that keep it from meeting current needs.

The legacy modernisation challenge has generally come down to an economic argument: the cost of keeping an ineffective, older system versus the total cost of modernising it — including the strain on people and other processes whole it is being replaced.

Further to this, it is sometimes necessary to consider how citizens will react to a new solution as well, if the upgrade happens to be a new portal or application for public use.

Enter the concept of Hybrid IT

Simply put, Hybrid IT is a management approach that combines legacy, on-premise systems with public and private cloud, deployment environment across multiple public clouds, private clouds, and on-premises and cloud-based virtualized environments, as well as traditional on-premises systems, including legacy assets.

As such, hybrid IT gives enterprises the means for modernising legacy — a framework for modernisation. Within this broader strategic context there are three trends that are changing the nature of legacy modernisation.

Trend #1: The Cloud

Like downsizing a house and seeing it as an opportunity to clear away a whole lot of clutter, so too is moving to the cloud.

Even as organisations adopt cloud-first strategies, rarely is there an opportunity to “lift and shift” a legacy app directly into the cloud. Instead, cloud-native approaches like containers and microservices give technology teams new opportunities to replace legacy functionality with modern applications.

Make no mistake: cloud-native approaches are challenging. The combination of complex technology and scarce, costly skills can hamper a cloud-native migration.

Trend #2: DevOps

DevOps is an automation-driven model for collaboration across the IT organisation, including development, quality assurance, operations, and security — as well as an increasing level of collaboration with people in customer-facing roles. Such individuals have a previously unheard-of opportunity to really represent their department or agency, bringing their inside knowledge to the design and functionality of the project.

DevOps, however, isn’t only for bespoke development. DevOps is also an essential enabler of legacy modernisation, as the teams responsible for maintaining legacy apps must be an integral part of the collaborative nature of a DevOps project.

In the past, modernisation has often succumbed to the “throw it over the wall” mentality that DevOps can likely resolve. DevOps calls for pushing such decision-making down to cross-functional, collaborative teams — who might determine, for example, that the best way to deal with a legacy app is to modernise it in its existing place and format. In other words, the right modernisation decision may very well be to update an existing application in its existing operational environment, perhaps rewriting it with microservices.

Proceeding with modernisation without DevOps and the automation and collaboration it can bring, it is much harder to make the best decision for whether to rewrite, migrate, modernise or simply leave a legacy system in place.

Trend #3: High-performance Low-Code Platforms

With this range of choices now available, modernising a legacy application is no longer a monolithic task. However, such modernisation typically requires the creation of new application capabilities, which brings us to the third trend: high-performance low-code platforms.

One of the reasons why IT managers in the past have baulked at modernising legacy applications is the sheer cost, time, and risk involved in hand-coding an application. Low-code changes this equation, lowering both the time and risk involved in application creation.

However, not all low-code vendors focus on legacy modernisation. For many, bespoke app development is often their reason-for-being. It is necessary to do some homework on the task at hand, and decide which vendor or vendors are best suited.

Low-code can also take advantage of the many cloud native services out there, giving companies the benefit of cloud native without the effort of using traditional tools.

There is also the consideration of data risk when looking at a lift-and-shift approach — some data is simply too sensitive to move lightly, so finding ways to keep it within an original storage repository or platform can sometimes be optimal — therefore, finding a way to make it work better in that original environment is paramount.

Consider it like a web or framework that envelops the legacy application, making it work faster, more efficiently and integrating better with other systems.

An enterprise application development platform can help move a government agency towards a hybrid IT infrastructure, modernise legacy applications, bridge-build between disparate platforms and generally provide many integral facets of a digital transformation or modernisation project.

Modernising is no longer a long-term plan, or something that is ‘nice to have’ — it is simply essential to bring systems up to speed in the modern, post-pandemic world. Citizens — whether they are customers or constituents — demand fast, seamless digital interactions. This is true for private enterprise, and equally so for government agencies — and both sides have plenty to lose if they cannot provide those services.

Image credit: iStock.com/ArtemisDiana