According to an eye-opening survey by Forrester, a shocking 73% of manufacturers have over half their applications still running on aging on-premise infrastructures and outdated mainframes. Once a source of stability, these legacy systems, with their antiquated technologies, rigid architectures, and cumbersome workflows, have become hazardous technical debts restricting agility, limiting functionality and scalability, and compromising security.
To compete in the era of intelligent manufacturing, data-driven operations, and disruptive innovation, industrial firms need to take a hard look at rationalizing and modernizing their application landscapes.
What is Application Modernization?
Application modernization is the process of migrating, optimizing, updating, and transforming applications to align with current technological standards, industry requirements, and evolving user expectations.
The first step in the modernization journey is a comprehensive evaluation of each application considering technical fit, operational costs, utilization, and business value. The analysis identifies which applications should be retired, retained, repurchased, rehosted, replaced, rearchitected, or rewritten.
The ultimate goal of application modernization is to create a streamlined, modern portfolio that aligns with the organization’s digital transformation needs now and in the future.
The Growing Technology Gap
Integrating newer technologies like AI, ML, IoT sensors, and advanced analytics with legacy systems has become exceptionally difficult, requiring extensive customized coding and integration costs. On average, your legacy systems take 2-3 times more effort to maintain and cost over five times more per transaction than modern cloud-based applications.
Agility and Innovation Demands
Legacy applications severely constrain business agility and time to market with inefficient release cycles and the inability to scale rapidly. Monolithic applications make even minor tweaks slow and painful, while homegrown tools built for niche use cases create fragmentation. As a result, technical debt accumulates, manual workarounds become commonplace, and siloed systems start to obstruct visibility.
Performance and Scalability Issues
Modern industrial operations require applications that provides real-time insights, processes vast amounts of data, and executes complex tasks efficiently and accurately. Legacy systems simply lack the scalability and elasticity to meet such spikes in demand, eventually forcing you to over-provision infrastructure.
Rising Costs and Tech Debt
Maintaining multiple legacy applications entails high operational and maintenance costs, redundant functionalities, and inefficient processes and demands for specialized skills and hardware. Consequently, technical debt accumulates, making it increasingly difficult to innovate at the pace required today. Let’s not forget the tremendous number of servers and systems required to support this portfolio.
Enhanced Security Requirements
With cybersecurity threats constantly evolving, legacy platforms pose enormous security risks, as over 70% of breaches are tied to vulnerabilities in outdated systems. Built on antiquated architectures and lacking modern security features, they are particularly susceptible to shadow IT, cyber-attacks, and data breaches.
Regulatory Compliance Mandates
Evolving regulations often necessitate revamping aging applications that fail compliance requirements. Non-compliance with regulations like GDPR due to legacy apps can lead to heavy penalties for industrial companies. For instance, your legacy ERP systems likely lack the necessary security safeguards for sensitive financial data, like customer payment information, that are now mandated by regulatory standards. These systems simply weren’t designed for today’s security needs.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
Unexpected events such as natural disasters, geopolitical tensions, and public health crises underscore the critical importance of business continuity plans. With their monolithic architectures and single points of failure, legacy applications can pose significant risks to continuity and resilience. Additionally, their inflexibility, coupled with poor failure provisions, may further amplify disruptions.
Data-Driven Decision Making
Industry leaders like Siemens emphasize data-driven manufacturing as the next frontier for exponential value creation. However, decades-old industrial legacy systems frequently lack the capabilities to fully leverage data and analytics, potentially impeding your organization’s capacity to derive actionable insights and make informed decisions.
Scalability and Flexibility Requirements
As you expand your industrial operations and enter new markets to serve increasingly diverse customer needs, scalability and flexibility become crucial. Legacy monoliths may limit your ability to scale on demand, adjust to dynamic needs, and enable organizational agility. Moreover, point solutions grown organically over generations could further constrain flexibility.
Customer Experience Expectations
Today’s consumers expect seamless omnichannel experiences with real-time responsiveness. Yet, legacy applications, burdened by fragmented data and inflexible interfaces, face considerable hurdles in meeting these expectations. The integration of modern customer experience features exacerbates this challenge even more.
Competitive Pressure
Legacy systems and outdated applications can hinder your organization’s agility, affecting innovation, time-to-market, and responsiveness to market trends. As competitors adopt advanced technologies and processes, you may find your existing systems struggling to support new products, meet customer needs, or data-driven insights, potentially leaving you behind in the game.
Addressing Your Modernization Triggers
All the above triggers point towards one vital truth: staying stagnant puts your competitive edge at risk. But fear not! Utthunga’s Application Modernization services help you navigate this complex digital terrain and unlock the true potential of your applications. We go beyond simple updates, offering comprehensive solutions to meet your unique industrial requirements.
We understand that every company’s needs are unique. Whether you’re facing technical obsolescence, demanding performance needs, cost pressures, enhanced security requirements, regulatory compliance, or evolving business goals, our team of experts is equipped to help you navigate the journey toward a truly modern application landscape. And we have more to offer.
Our Unique Value Propositions that Drive Real Change:
2. Tech Stack for Modernization: Ditch the outdated tools and embrace future-proof technologies like cloud, APIs, and microservices. Based on an assessment of your landscape, we architect the optimal technology stack tailored to your specific requirements. We leverage leading platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud to improve scalability, resilience, and efficiency. Our API-driven integration enables legacy systems to share data and functions with modern applications. Transitioning to microservices architecture allows faster iteration and innovation.
4. Complete Toolkit for End-to-End Modernization: From strategy to execution, we offer a comprehensive set of tools and services. This includes current-state assessment, future-state architecture, transformation roadmap, pilot implementations, integration testing, data migration, cutover planning, training, and ongoing managed services for the modern environment. We guide you through the entire modernization lifecycle, ensuring a smooth transition and continuous optimization.
Our Modernization Expertise
Utthunga’s application modernization services cover a wide range of solutions for various applications, including:
ERP: Streamline your core business processes with modernized ERP systems.
CRM: Enhance customer relationships and boost sales with robust, modern CRM solutions.
MES, MOM, MDM, Digital Logbooks, IIoT Platform, CMMS, Traceability Apps: Optimize manufacturing operations and gain valuable insights with cutting-edge technologies.
Decision Support Systems, Supply Chain Apps, Workflow Management, Manufacturing Analytics, Alarms and Event Apps, Historian, KPI Dashboards, PaaS/SaaS Applications, Quality Monitoring Apps: Gain data-driven insights and improve decision-making across your organization.
Our Team of Experts: We don’t just offer services; we provide seasoned professionals who understand your industry and challenges. Our application modernization team comprises:
SME & Architect Pool: System architects, solution architects, cloud architects, IoT platform architects, IT architects, cybersecurity architects, domain/industry experts, business analysts, and program and project managers.
Engineers: Application engineers, cloud engineers, data engineers, QA engineers, DevOps engineers, cybersecurity engineers, UI/UX engineers.
Why You Should Partner with Utthunga?
- Tailored Solutions: We don’t believe in one-size-fits-all solutions. We work closely with you to understand your specific needs and goals, developing a customized plan that aligns with your unique IT landscape and industrial objectives.
- Future-Proof Technology: We leverage the latest technologies, including cloud, IoT, and AI, to ensure your applications are not only modern but also scalable and adaptable to future needs.
- Reduced Costs: Modernization can save you money in the long run by reducing technical debt, improving operational efficiency, and minimizing security risks.
- Enhanced Security: We prioritize security at every step of the process, ensuring your applications meet the highest industry standards and regulatory requirements.
- Faster Time to Market: By streamlining your application portfolio, you can accelerate development and innovation, bringing new products and services to market faster.
Ready to Modernize Your Applications?
Modernizing legacy systems and streamlining your application portfolio boosts efficiency today while establishing a foundation for greater agility and faster rollout of future innovations. The results? Improved processes, better user experiences, and a stronger business overall, rebuilt from the ground up.
Our application modernization services go beyond just upgrading systems. We help you prevent future technical debt accumulation while ensuring easy integration of new innovations. At Utthunga, we keep the big picture in mind to future-proof your business and ensure you are always ahead of the curve.
So don’t let outdated applications hold you back. Contact us today and let our team of experts help you unlock the full potential of your industrial application portfolio. We’ll guide you through the process, mitigate risks, and ensure a smooth transition to a modern and future-proof application landscape.
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