Modernizing ISV’s Legacy Suites – A Primer

A lot has been talked about the need for rapid innovation and digitalization during and after the pandemic. Now, companies are keen on using digital investments rightly to drive operational excellence and growth. While this is true for many companies that survived the pandemic slowdown, some are not yet legacy-free.

Legacy IT maintenance demands too much time and resources. It remains the main roadblock to digital transformation for reasons such as cumbersome maintenance and support, integration and compliance issues, security threats, high maintenance costs, and lost business opportunities or organizational agility and efficiency. Hence, Legacy Apps become the main pain points for any ISV in achieving its business goals.

The Business strategy of any company must include identifying and evaluating modern technologies, comparing them with legacy software complex programs, and interlacing them with the inner workings of the organization.

Modern Technology upgrades are essential. But..

How to choose among the plethora of products available?

When choosing a new platform to develop and modernize the product, we should look for pre-built application components with localization and globalization features that allow our businesses to penetrate new markets. The existing platform environment when integrated with the new platform should facilitate designing, building, testing, deploying, monitoring, and updating with ease. Additionally, the transition opens new avenues by making it available for web and desktop, and enables mobile cross-platform access to data, which is quite essential in the current hybrid mode of working.

The Standard Process of Modernization

The myth that an investment in any recent technology stack would bring good returns had been proven false by many sad and true business stories. The top leaders and management in a company should identify problems in the current system and discuss them with the teams to make a list of pain points and opportunities. They should identify what is working fine and what’s not, what cannot be used anymore, and what is present but not used or needed. This process helps in choosing the right modernization strategy and products that help streamline work and deliver more efficiently.

Here are three steps that help any business modernize and transition smoothly.

Ascertain – Align the product teams to determine what needs to be modernized in the current software product to achieve business objectives.

Working with sales and marketing teams, the decision makers need to understand market trends, varying prices, customer feedback, and competitors’ offerings. They also need to identify the growth and innovation potential of several solutions and products in the market and choose one that’s more appropriate for their business strategy and in sync with other platforms and products they’re currently using.

Identifying various possibilities is the first step in modernization.

Resolve – The next step starts with a deep analysis of product design, architecture, and infrastructure, of various modernization options available, and if the skill set of in-house software developers is sufficient to implement them. The gaps are identified, and a strategic partner is chosen to help the business in modernizing software in a timely and more efficient way.

Carefully ascertaining various possibilities is an essential step in finalizing the most appropriate product for your business.

Modernize – The strategic partner together with in-house development teams implement the new platform and trains the teams on how to implement and use the new system. Some choose to employ a new dedicated team with the help of an offshore development partner to integrate new technologies with current ones.

Modernization may also coincide with other business and technology goals like platforming, cloud transformation, etc. It is also a good opportunity to scale up the product with new features or introduce it to new geographies. Technology decisions like the placement of servers or choosing server vendors are based on customer base, vendor choices, business plans, regulatory issues, etc. Such changes are also easier to implement during modernization.

Finally..

Gone are those days when modernization was treated like a one-time project with a deadline. These days, however, with fast technological advancements, modernization is a continuous process. It is closely entwined with product and platform engineering and is best achieved by leveraging strategic collaborations. Moreover, such modernization backed by strong product engineering provides businesses an opportunity to own intellectual property (IP).

Whether it is a customized or a freshly engineered product, it can be encapsulated into an IP and sold in the market, providing the makers with an additional revenue source and an opportunity to expand into new domains. As a product engineering wing of the Digital Transformation leader – Xebia, coMakeIT is here to help ISVs achieve their business as well as technology goals.

Whether it is setting up a software factory in India or productizing software solutions into intellectual properties, coMakeIT provides various collaboration models to suit the needs of ISVs as well as other businesses seeking software innovations. For more details on our product engineering services, please visit our website.