Application Modernization – Miten Marfatia, EvolveWare

This is Textron TV. Hey guys. Thanks here with Mike did Mark party who's the CEO for evolved work?

And we're talking about application modernization might welcome the show. Thank you. Thank you, Mike.

It seems like application modernization is so much in the eye of the beholder that it's not quite clear that everybody's talking about the same thing at the same time. It could be anything from my slot the new GUI on the front end to something to every wrote the entire application to be Cloud native and it runs on kubernetes these days. So what is your sense of what do people mean by the phrase that modernization these days and what is what runs the gamut of that term?

Well, so Mike I would say that up until three years back when the cloud was still in its very very infancy. App modernization meant anything from just slapping a gooey to emulation? And most people at the time were really thinking about, you know, shaving costs by getting up the Mainframe or addressing the shrinking talent pool.

but with the Advent of the cloud and also the talent pool shrinking even further people are now looking at true application modernization and what I mean by that is taking their existing Legacy system and not just placing some layer on top of it, but actually converting it into modern Technologies so that they can take advantage of the cloud environment. They can take advantage of you know, the new shall I say I'd say the new set of people coming into the IT industry so, you know for in terms of support and development. Part of that are people rewriting applications or they slice them up in the microservices and what part of this equation are.

They actually struggling. Well, you know. I think what they're really struggling with is.

when they try and initiate an application modernization project without a proper methodology and a proper set of processes. That's when this struggle it's not what type of application modernization they're struggling with. It's it's how it's being approached.

You know, there are some people who are thinking, you know, maybe it's just a Magic Bullet and it can be done very quickly. There are very few issues that will come up because maybe that's what they've been fed, but that's really not true. what we've seen Is if you take a phased approach?

to modernization and you know we had A call with a very large research company just today itself. and we were discussing the same thing that if a client takes the effort or makes the effort to understand the current state of their application. And then take a decision on how they want to modernize it.

Do they want to extract the business rules and rewrite it or do they want to just migrate, you know old Legacy code to new Legacy code. That approach if they take that decision after they have gone through and reviewed their current state of the application. It helps a lot.

Because then they're making taking the right decisions now, go ahead. One is the right decision because sometimes you know do I modernize the application at all, or should I just rip and replace it or should I maybe write something entirely new? That's maybe different or better?

So, you know. Really? I I look at that.

Also if you replace it. It's an application modernization because what you really have to do. Is your replacing it with a modern system and it's not something where you just say?

Let me just Remove or retire the old system without even worrying about what I was running. Because then you are forced into accepting the logic and the rules in the new system. And typically over the years you've added some homegrown rules.

So even in in a situation like this. You want to extract the business rule from your old application? Compare it to the rules that are existing in the new modern platform that you are trying to replace it with.

And then if there are any Deltas or any differences, then you want to take those rules and add them into the modern platform so that you're actually running a system. You really want to run. So I call that also application modernization which is extraction of rules.

Exporting the ones you need into the new platform. And what's driving me to go do this is it digital business transformation initiatives or is there some other factors that work here whether it's technical debt or whatever else it might be well. There is definitely a technical debt issue.

There is a security issue, but I think what's really driving this of course security being very important is You really do not have. Talent or you do not have support personnel. That are available.

to manage your old applications and you know people who understand those old applications are probably in the 60s. I have I have actually met a company where the youngest person managing one of their financial applications. Is a 76 year old lady?

Hey, so so it tells you that that's that's an imp. I mean that is really an earth. There is an urgency.

Because you know, how long are these people going to continue to want to come to work and manage your application? That's one. And then of course there is this the drive to reduce cost.

By taking going to the cloud and being able to share. A certain Services. I think there's a multitude of reasons why application modernization is important today.

Then rather than waiting for it for tomorrow, the programming languages play a role in this because sometimes a lot of the folks who wrote a certain application where you know to your point having to retirement. So am I gonna be able to find somebody who can maintain an application if all the kids are running in a different language? Very true and which is what I'm saying that the people who support these old Legacy applications and who understand the language the language the Legacy languages.

Once they are gone and are not available. You are you you know, if you're still continuing to run those applications you're in a mess because you won't be able to update any business policies. You will not have.

Someone to manage or even maintain those applications and its status quo. So the earlier the better. Because think about it if you're in your 60s already.

And say 10 years down the road, you know, it'll be even worse. To that point our organizations that modernize gonna be more agile because they have a code base. That's a little more modular and easier to mix and match different components and apis and they will ultimately have a more tangible business benefit from having done all this work versus just doing it for the sake.

Correct plus a reduction in cost. recurring cost inability to share an optimize their systems with their vendors and clients so number of number of advantages. What do you think is the biggest challenge these organizations are having from a staffing perspective and finding people to go do all this stuff.

And is it something that I just hire a bunch of consultant because frankly I'm only going to do it a couple of times. It's not really an ongoing set of skills or is application modernization forever. I I would say that.

at least for the near future you need to look at as I would call it agile modernization meaning it's modernization that's going to continue as part of a broad initiative. until a you retire your old applications or you converted them or you Shall I say merge them? And so I think you you have to take this as one which is doesn't make sense to just hire a bunch of Consultants alone.

But you need to be vested in this process at least vested to the point where you've taken the right decisions and you have been a party to the decisions regarding the approach and the processes. I think that's very critical. When I talk to people one of the things they seem to struggle with this the data that they have is so tied to the application very hard untangle the two and so how do I get in there and kind of say all right.

Well, we want to keep the data but the data has so many hooks to the old application and it's just too hard to remove. So is that a factor in my decision processor? Is there some clean way of migrating the data out?

So, you know, what would be what we have seen is there are some companies. Who actually migrate the data first? Move it to Modern database that can communicate with the Legacy applications.

And then they actually migrate the applications or modernize the applications, you know with selected modules having different priorities. But but data is a very critical piece of this. I mean, you know data runs the show.

Movement we have also seen the rise of containers and some people will encapsulate an entire Legacy application throws an apis around and say, you know over time we'll slice and dice this thing but are there different paths to modernizing applications that take advantage of containerization or should I just not do that? Because all I did was take my very large piece of code and stick it in a isolated box with an API some I I'm not sure of that really works putting it into an isolated box again, as I said, it's really will depend on What your application is doing for you? And whether you can say, you know, alright, I'm going to separate this from the rest of my environment and just run it.

On its own. I don't think that's that's an option. Generally that you will find as a workable.

Do you worry that so many organizations will fail that basically will just get a blowback against the whole idea and people will say, oh it's not bother with that because it's just too career threatening. Well, what would they do? If they don't bother I think what you know, they have to do something about that application because it's running their organization, right the the operations.

And so you don't want to be running in an in a fashion where your it budgets are going through the roof simply because you're unwilling to shall I see pay the attention and the time and effort. To modernize your environment. I think that is would be a fallacy.

I think if they spend the time again, I I am repeating myself Mike, but if they spend the time. In finalizing and approach and a set of processes. And you do it by doing a pilot?

And you make sure that you're getting the results that you're looking for. I think then. You know your chances of success are actually quite good.

and and we are seeing that so to your point then do I need to think about application modernization more as a continuous process rather than just an event that happens from time to time. And for that matter. We're always continuously modernizing applications because we'll see new technologies coming over the horizon.

Maybe we need to just think about this something that happens on a continuum. Yes, I think modernization is a continuous process, but I think the level of modernization. may change You know, once you've taken care of the True Legacy applications that are now 30 40 years old remember?

Those app we know people did not embark on any modernization probably for the last 20 years. And so now you've got a big chunk of work that is pending. If it takes modernization as part of the regular process, which is, you know, you go through the life cycle for each application from maintenance to modernization and it continues as for each application as the time right time arrives.

Then you're not going to see this urgency that I think we are beginning to see right now, especially with state governments large Insurance and financial companies. Because you're there is now an urgency at the at the end. All right.

Well folks you heard it here applications essentially coming to freshen the state you need to keep that in mind because they will go stale and start to taste bad. Hey Michael. Thanks for being on the show.

Thank you, Mike. All right and back to you guys and see.