Why Talk About Application Modernization !!

The pace of change happening in the marketplace either on account of shifting business models – primarily focused on agility, business velocity and be competitive in the new digital economy has one major hurdle that has the potential to bring this to a screeching halt. Just like the speed of innovation for smartphone device (lower weight, high battery life and multi-tasking) is constrained by the Battery technology (slow evolution from Ni-Cad to Li-O), similarly old monolithic applications built in disparate technology have simply run out of fuel to address today’s requirements. 

There seems to be a trade-off between re-wiring old legacy applications versus modernization using platforms that are cloud-based, support rapid application development and provide in-built capability to incorporate features such as automation, mobility, device portability and seamless user experience across channels. I am talking about looking at modernization from a holistic angle to enable cost reduction, but also provide that critical business edge that is desperately needed. On the top of it, the original designers or authors would have either retired or left the organization and sourcing skills to maintain those application are hard to come by. Traditionally, the approach most commonly adopted till probably 5~7 years ago was to build bolt-ons or “extend” and “enrich” those applications by wiring them to modern COTS products or resorting to the last and only holy grain of “modernization” – that is to create a dashboard or a Business Intelligence / Data Warehouse to make sense of the data residing in those older applications. Another option available to organizations was to migrate them to larger enterprise application, but it turned out that implementing applications grounds-up is much more simpler and effective than migrate and modernize (or shall we say modernize then migrate)

 At the upcoming @Dreamforce, #DF15, I would be talking on a similar topic where Application Modernization can be accelerated and realized on @Salesforce1 platform. When executed well, it has the potential to dramatically lower the total cost and yet enable business capabilities such as user experience, social insight, mobility support – all using standard tool-set or partner ecosystem products. The supporting technology around integration tools and rapid prototyping is also a huge plus.