What Is Application Modernization?

Why Doing It Effectively Is Important

The key to success in application modernization is strategy. Businesses should examine each potential modernization project and consider the benefits of cloud, speed, performance, and other features. Cloud-based development is great for shortening the development cycle and creating a modern customer experience and ROI. 

Moving your application from on-premises to the cloud can be a big undertaking. One of the challenges is cost and complexity. While this is a big shift, updating legacy standards could boost developers’ productivity by up to 40%. Modernizing applications and facilitating access to better developer services can help make engineering teams more productive and enhance time-to-market. 

In today's fast-changing world, IT environments must be flexible and innovative. App modernization is a way to do this. It enables organizations to capitalize on digital technology, including AI, machine learning, big data, and the cloud. 

Application modernization also helps with security. In recent surveys, it was found that legacy applications make businesses vulnerable to security threats. It's because these archaic programs are not compatible with high-quality security standards and modern authentication methods. As a result, today's businesses are more prone to hackers. If you want to stop these security risks, the best way to do this is to upgrade your outdated applications to take advantage of better security standards.

Migrate & Modernize Apps Safely

As you modernize, you have to find the approach that fits within your organization's strategic priorities. There are many ways to approach legacy application modernization, but all come with their own benefits and difficulties. One of the best and safest ways to migrate and modernize apps safely is with feature flags. 

Moving or changing databases is no small task, and it can often be really risky. One of the most common misconceptions is that feature flags are only useful for new features, or for cosmetic changes. It turns out they can be really helpful in less risky situations too, such as moving or changing databases. They make it easier to test it with real, live data (for a subset of your user base), and much easier to roll it back if something goes wrong.  

Database migrations are intimidating, but also necessary. This process of using feature flags for migrations has been done many times by other companies, and for the most part, it goes rather smoothly. After all, who wants to have an unsafe migration? Feature flags can be used to confidently run database migrations while not impacting any customers.

Have More Control With Granular Targeting & Gradual Releases

When you're upgrading a legacy system to a cloud-based one, a powerful capability with feature flags is the ability to toggle features on and off. This enables you to route traffic, requests, and data between old and new systems seamlessly. You can also create targeting rules that allow you to deploy new infrastructure with extreme precision. 

There are multiple ways to migrate workloads to the cloud. For example, you can execute iterative migration of small batches of your application at a time with feature flags. You can also allow databases, micro-services, and containerized apps on the cloud for only a subset of users. 

Modernization improves user satisfaction. It's really hard to use outdated apps. A user interface with leading-edge functionalities and innovative features will make your company more efficient and your customers happier.

Speed Up Your Digital Transformation With Feature Flags

Modernizing your organization is an excellent step in the right direction. When legacy systems are updated this process can give your business the flexibility and agility it needs to address important business requirements and take advantage of new opportunities for growth. Feature flags make digital transformation seamless. They allow you to migrate from legacy systems to newer versions by slowly routing over traffic and allowing you to monitor how it affects your system. 

Legacy applications are often outdated and hard to use. Modernizing them is a great way to integrate new technologies and platforms into an organization's workflow. It also redefines the way an organization integrates its applications, making it more able to meet present and future demands. DevCycle feature flags allow you to create a modern development process to increase engineers’ efficiency and set your organization up for success.

Create A Free Account With DevCycle

DevCycle can help you take a low-risk approach to implement the right modernization strategy with feature flags. Our iterative, flexible approach to developing applications will help you manage them securely. 

Looking to modernize your applications? Leverage DevCycle feature flags to safely and easily retire your legacy applications.

Get started with a 14-day free trial of DevCycle.