“Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday.” – Steve Jobs
In an earlier article, I discussed modernisation and noted that the intention to modernise is to replace an older system/ model with an entirely new one and that there cannot be any middle ground. It was noted that the entire organisation had to modernise for this to be successful.
Having accepted this in principle, we will now focus on one area, application modernisation. By definition Application modernisation is the process of taking existing legacy applications and modernising their platform infrastructure, internal architecture, and/or features.
Drivers for this exercise are typically that the current platform / applications have become obsolete resulting in rising costs and effort to maintain beyond what is viable (a situation that also slows the business down). It could be that the platform or application are no longer supported which exposes the business to cyber security threats and non- compliance issues. Contract and license agreement renewals also prompt assessments of how the current Applications and Systems are delivering against business requirements. Other drivers include:
- Emerging customers who expect better, faster, always available services;
- End user / modern user who are more mobile and have diverse expectations;
- Security and compliance requirements;
- Consolidation resulting from mergers, acquisitions and divestitures.
A key goal for IT and application modernisation assessments is to gain a clear understanding of what a company’s core business is. All other activities are considered as commodities that could be outsourced, allowing the business to focus on its own capabilities. Here are some of the services we at 1Tech can help you with:
- Modernisation opportunity analysis;
- Applications and technology portfolio governance, architecture principles;
- Application portfolio assessment covering key data points such as 4Rs, technical health, business capability importance and support, business value, criticality, stability, DR support, technical strategy fit, stability, security posture, plan;
- Application lifecycle heatmap – 4R’s – retain/refresh/replace/retire;
- Application portfolio catalogue – baseline definition to a true master source;
- Application criticality heatmap;
- Enterprise application information flows view;
- Potential modernisation roadmaps (with dependencies).
To find out more about these and other services we offer please visit www.1tech.co or contact us on info@1tech.co
Greg