Application modernization services offer solutions for moving legacy applications or legacy systems to newer ones while integrating new features to provide up-to-date functions for the business. A clear strategy is key for a successful application modernization that delivers obvious benefits, such as improved customer experience and ROI, through cloud advantages like speed, performance, scale, and new feature development.
Application Modernization Services
Application modernization consulting
We conduct a comprehensive analysis of your legacy application's code and infrastructure, extract requirements, and offer in-depth recommendations on how to optimize and maximize the value of your past investments.
Application modernization POC
We help you cut high maintenance costs and lift restrictions on legacy apps. We run a modernization POC for your app to improve its performance, add new functionality, and scale it effectively.
Legacy app migration to the cloud
Belitsoft applies different approaches to migrating applications to the cloud, depending on the specific requirements and business needs. Cloud migration involves re-hosting the application, re-platforming it, or re-architecting it to suit the cloud environment better.
Application reengineering
We have a team of experts with diverse skills in legacy applications modernization. They take care of updating and making minor modifications to the code and design of your enterprise applications that have been running for a long time.
Application recoding
We can modernize your legacy systems that were built with outdated languages and platforms like PowerBuilder, Delphi, VB, C++, COBOL, or out-of-date technologies such as old versions of Java and .NET. To achieve this we use modern programming languages, frameworks, and databases.
Application containerization
We isolate your legacy applications or their components from each other at the operating system level, regardless of the modernization options chosen. This favors better portability, scalability, and performance consistency of the application.
Application Modernization Strategies We Use
Rehosting. This “lift-and-shift” modernization strategy emphasizes speed because it requires no code changes in practice. Organizations take legacy apps from their previous environment and transfer them as-is from their current environment, such as an on-premises server, to a more modern infrastructure, like a public cloud platform.
Refactoring. Refactoring prioritizes productivity and speed. It involves reorganizing and rewriting portions of the existing code app to enhance it for a new environment, typically cloud infrastructure. This process may engage a significant restructuring of the codebase to break down a monolithic application into microservices to achieve greater efficiency and scalability for your business processes.
Replatforming. This approach concerns making complementary updates to the existing code and architecture, rather than significant changes like in refactoring. It enables the legacy application to take full advantage of a modern cloud platform and improve performance or scalability.
Rearchitecting. This may be the most proper approach if an organization requires cloud scalability. It covers modifying and extending app functionality and code to improve scalability in the cloud.
Rebuilding. Rebuilding an app using cloud solutions may be necessary when existing apps have restricted functionality or a limited lifespan. This approach involves more effort, but it is crucial in the mentioned cases.
Key Technologies for Application Modernization
Cloud computing
Moving traditional applications to run on modern cloud environments: public, private, and hybrid clouds. Public cloud platforms refer to cloud services that are accessible over the internet and managed by third-party providers. Private clouds are cloud environments that are dedicated to a single organization and hosted either on-premises or by a third-party provider. Hybrid clouds refer to environments that combine elements of both public and private clouds, often integrated with on-premises environments.
Containers
A modern approach to packaging, deploying, and running applications and workloads in cloud environments. This technique benefits enhanced scalability, portability, and operational efficiency, which are especially well-suited for cloud infrastructure, along with multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments. The containers streamline deployment and management through encapsulating applications in self-contained units to contribute seamless integration and easier scaling of resources.
Microservices
An architectural approach that involves breaking down a complex system into smaller, more manageable parts that can operate autonomously while communicating with one another via application programming interfaces (APIs). By reducing dependencies between components, microservices enable teams to make updates and changes more quickly and efficiently.
Automation
This approach involves automating many of the operational tasks associated with containers, such as deployment, scaling, and networking. With automation and orchestration tools, developers can automate many routine tasks that would otherwise be time-consuming and error-prone. It allows them to focus on building and improving legacy apps and to ensure greater consistency, scalability, and reliability across development, testing, and production environments.
API
These are tools to facilitate the connection and communication between legacy applications, devices, and data across an organization's IT infrastructure. Integration through APIs helps streamline processes and workflows, saves time and increases cost efficiency that would otherwise be lost because of incompatible systems that can't communicate effectively.
AI and ML
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning enhance business processes and get abundant insights from their applications and data through personalization, predictive analytics, automated testing, and other methods.
Benefits of Application Modernization
Accelerated innovation and time to market
Organizations focus on innovation since they reduce the time and allocated resources to maintain apps and infrastructure. Cloud-based tools and services facilitate the development process, enabling faster time-to-market.
Security and reliability
By adopting a cloud-first strategy, organizations leverage the inherent updating and enhance security capabilities to protect their workloads. They benefit from built-in functionalities like task automation, such as high availability, disaster recovery, backups, and performance monitoring.
Compatibility and agility
Modernizing apps not only establish compatibility with the latest technology, but also enable them to function seamlessly as technology develops. This allows for swift updates and adaptations to meet present and future business requirements. To settle optimal performance during spikes in demand and cost reduction during sudden drops in demand, it facilitates automatic scaling.
Efficiency
When done thoughtfully, it can be easier to modernize existing apps than to create new ones from scratch. That way, organizations can build on existing investments rather sink time and money into something new. App modernization further keeps many current processes and maintains business continuity compared to plugging completely new apps into existing operations.
Application Modernization Process at Belitsoft
- Discovery phase to deliberate the app modernization goals and plan a strategy. This involves exploring and evaluating existing apps and environments to prepare for transformation.
- Detailed cost estimation of the entire app modernization project based on the results of the previous analysis.
- High-level design to outline the overall architecture, technology stack, and key components.
- Functional prototyping to show the core features of the final app.
- Security review to ensure that the app meets industry standards and compliance requirements.
- A detailed project plan outlining the resources, milestones, and timeline for the modernization project. We prepare technical documentation at this stage to describe the app's design, architecture, and implementation.
- User acceptance testing to detect issues and fix them before moving to the next app modernization stages.
- Modernization of the application and infrastructure, following our roadmap, to ensure everything works as scheduled.
- QA and software testing to make sure the delivered application works as expected by making manual and automated tests.
Azure-Based Application Modernization Solutions by Belitsoft
Azure Cosmos DB. Transform your scalable and high-performance apps with a fully managed NoSQL database service.
Azure Virtual Desktop. Facilitate a secure remote desktop experience accessible from almost anywhere.
Azure API Management. Accelerate your pace with cohesive API management throughout multi-cloud and hybrid environments.
Azure DevOps. Enhance your planning, collaboration, and shipping speed with a suite of contemporary development services.
Azure VMware Solution. Migrate or expand on-premises VMware environments to Azure.
Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS). Efficiently deployed and a service provider manages scale containers on Kubernetes.
Azure SQL Database. Develop scalable apps using cloud-based managed and intelligent SQL services.
Azure Web Application Firewall. Safeguard your apps using a full cloud-native web application firewall service.
Azure Machine Learning. Construct machine learning models at a significant scale, which are crucial to your business.
Google Cloud Application Modernization Solutions by Belitsoft
Hybrid and multi-cloud application platform Anthos. Develop and optimize apps flexibly and securely.
Cloud-native application development. Speed up your developers' productivity, simplify operations, and enhance security and include compliance in your software delivery process with Google Cloud's comprehensive platform.
Application development and delivery with serverless Cloud Run and Cloud Functions tools. Accelerate speed to market over a fully managed serverless environment.
DevOps. Increase software delivery velocity, improve the stability of software, and build highly secure shared ownership among software stakeholders.
Google Kubernetes containers. Migrate your application away from virtual machines and into native containers. Intelligently extract and convert apps from VMs to containers in Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) or Anthos clusters without the VM layers (like Guest OS).
API management. Speed up application development with an API-first approach, using Google Cloud’s API management platform to manage all your APIs across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Mainframe modernization. Avoid money-consuming mainframe refresh cycle and business risk by modernizing your mainframe app quickly into containers in GKE. Innovate without constraints working with automated code refactoring tools beside advanced application discovery from Google.
Application Modernization Best Practices
Toward the challenges of application modernization, enterprises need to change their approach to modernizing applications. Here are some best practices recommended for creating a framework for modernizing mainframe applications.
Break up monoliths. To develop a mainframe application modernization framework, start a detailed roadmap to outline the intended organizational structure, servers, network configurations, storage configurations, and the application deployment on the servers. Break the roadmap down into components and model all networking between them. This makes clear creating a virtualized application environment applying tools such as open source, containers, and cloud APIs, and sets up to implement the approach to scale.
Untether applications and infrastructure. Make enterprise applications independent of the underlying infrastructure by separating them from all data sources, network, data, and security configurations. This enables application components to run anywhere, on any infrastructure, requiring no changes to the code. And ensures complete portability and eliminates vendor lock-in.
Lower cost of components. Applications go through different environments, versions, and deployments throughout their lifecycle in organization. Splitting an application into its core components relieves the new versions design of the application as required. This speeds up the integration testing, migration, performance testing, and planning processes, and proceeds significant time savings and cost efficiency.
Build application security into the entire application lifecycle. Plan for application security throughout the full service lifecycle, from design to development, including application modernization. This ensures the applications are secure from the deployment offset despite their infrastructure.
Manage with a modular view. A modular view of the application is central to the modernization process. It allows handling individual application components and testing them in a virtualized environment. This approach also helps enterprises remain independent of any infrastructure.
Frequently Asked Questions
Legacy applications refer to core programs written many years ago. These applications are the foundation of an organization's IT architecture and have been supporting it for decades. Although these applications are low maintenance and perform well, they quit matching the growing customers' needs. Through application modernization services, it can add new features without affecting the vital existing backend processes for the business. This modernization aims to bridge the gap between legacy systems and new technologies to enable innovation and success in the digital marketplace. Businesses can extract new value from their core IT investments with this process.
Application modernization is updating legacy applications by modernizing their platform infrastructure, internal architecture, and/or new functionality. The benefits of application modernization include faster delivery of new features, the ability to expose existing application functionality via API to other services, and the re-platforming of legacy applications from on-premises to the cloud for better performance and scalability.
You are likely to need application modernization services in case you’ve been using the following apps and data for years without doing significant improvements or upgrades:
- Apps developed with .NET framework
- Web apps running on Linux
- Java-based apps
- SAP applications
- SQL databases
Application modernization is a safer option for enterprises than replacing their original applications with off-the-shelf alternatives that could compromise important data and workflows. This approach fails and creates financial losses for enterprises. A gradual modernization process can yield better returns on investment without disrupting operations. It is a crucial strategic business decision.
For many enterprises, application modernization services are the most practical approach to taking advantage of newer software platforms, tools, architectures, libraries, new security practices, virtualization, IoT, scalability requirements, and advancements in AI.
Legacy applications are often monolithic, which makes them difficult and expensive to update and scale. Modernizing a legacy software to a microservice's architecture can help address these challenges.
Instead of starting from scratch, organizations can modernize their existing apps. Moving their apps to the cloud in a "lift and shift" migration allows to break modernization into stages and benefit immediately from basic cloud computing features. They can then proceed with more advanced modernization techniques, such as rebuilding parts of their legacy applications to incorporate advanced capabilities or best practices.
Our Clients' Feedback
They use their knowledge and skills to program the product, and then completed a series of quality assurance tests. We were working in an agile way with them. Belitsoft performed very well throughout our project. We are definitely looking at Belitsoft as a long-term partner.
Service Delivery Director at Crimson (United Kingdom)
I highly recommend Belitsoft for website design and development. We were up against a tight deadline to launch the project. The work was delivered on time and within budget! I will continue working with Belitsoft as a valued partner for our web development!
Program Administrator at UC Berkeley (United States)
We have worked with Belitsoft team over the past few years on projects involving much customized programming work. They are knowledgeable and are able to complete tasks on schedule, meeting our technical requirements. We would recommend them to anyone who is in need of custom programming work.
Main Partner at Hathway Tech (United States)
Belitsoft company is able to make changes instantly. One of our internal engineers has commented about how clean their code is. Belitsoft seems to know what they're doing, which I appreciate.
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It was a great pleasure working with Belitsoft software development company. New requirements and adjustments were implemented fast and precisely. We can recommend Belitsoft and are looking forward to start a follow-up project.
Deputy Head of Division at Fraunhofer FIT (Germany)
Belitsoft company has been able to provide senior developers with the skills to support back end, native mobile and web applications. We continue today to augment our existing staff with great developers from Belitsoft.
CEO at Apollo Matrix (United States)
Belitsoft company delivered dedicated development team for our products, and technical specialists for our clients' custom development needs. We highly recommend to use this company if you want the same benefits.
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We approached BelITsoft with a concept, and they were able to convert it into a multi-platform software solution. Their team members are skilled, agile and attached to their work, all of which paid dividends as our software grew in complexity.
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Having worked with Belitsoft as a service provider, I must say that I'm very pleased with the company's policy. Belitsoft guarantees first-class service through efficient management, great expertise, and a systematic approach to business. I would strongly recommend Belitsoft's services to anyone wanting to get the right IT products in the right place at the right time.
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If you are looking for a true partnership Belitsoft company might be the best choice for you. They have proven to be most reliable, polite and professional. The team managed to adapt to changing requirements and to provide me with best solutions. I strongly recommend Belisoft.
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We have been working for over 10 years and they have become our long-term technology partner. Any software development, programming, or design needs we have had, Belitsoft company has always been able to handle this for us.
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Belitsoft has been the driving force behind several of our software development projects within the last few years. This company demonstrates high professionalism in their work approach. They have continuously proved to be ready to go the extra mile. We are very happy with Belitsoft, and in a position to strongly recommend them for software development and support as a most reliable and fully transparent partner focused on long term business relationships.
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