Successful Enterprise Application Modernization Requires Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure

Almost every firm today is considering digital transformation on some degree. From a strategic standpoint, the desire to enhance customer experience, company agility, and security, as well as enabling staff to be more productive, drives the demand for transformation. Companies know that executing on strategic transformation goals necessitates upgrading current applications and infrastructures to ensure workers have the tools and technology they need to thrive in their professions. In this report, application modernization is defined as the enhancements to people, processes, and technology (including on-premises and cloud infrastructure) that businesses are implementing to better support business goals.

Modernizing current apps and infrastructure is a critical transformation goal, but the variety of applications and infrastructures makes this apparently simple goal rather hard.

The first step is determining which apps should be modernized. Businesses need a wide range of apps to operate, but customer-facing applications were identified as one of the top three priorities by 66% of decision-makers, followed by core business systems (63%), and data management applications (57%). Every organization has a somewhat different goal in mind for its modernisation initiatives. Forrester's conversations with IT executives from three different businesses added to the picture of what application modernization initiatives would entail. The following examples show how various sectors have varied priorities when it comes to modernization:

State government example:

For a state government's Department of Child Services, the top priority for modernisation was its CRM/case management tools, followed by updating enterprise resource planning (ERP) to handle basic financials. Because the case management systems handled the majority of the traffic, improving these core systems was crucial. According to the CIO we talked with, as the organization's use cases for analytics/AI continue to grow, good data management will be crucial since greater self-awareness of current data is required to successfully employ it.

Example from the banking industry:

According to the bank IT executive we talked with, customer systems were his organization's top priority for application modernization, especially with the goals of enhancing customer experience and delivering greater customer insights. The COVID-19 epidemic heightened the relevance of this aim since many formerly in-person financial transactions needed to be transferred to digital representations. "It has taken some kind of priority because now we recognize that technology can play a major role [in the consumer experience]," stated the interviewee.

According to the interviewee, updating fundamental systems is equally vital, but the upgrades are aimed at making the systems simpler to administer.

Example from the insurance industry:

When we asked an insurance technology executive what his company's top priority for application modernization was, customer-facing systems came out on top. "There's a clear number one there - nothing even comes close," he remarked, referring to customer-facing apps. You must provide a spectacular client experience. You're not in business if you don't have it." He said that data and analytics, especially analytic solutions based on consumer behaviors and data, were his organization's second modernization priority.

Cloud and enterprise computing and storage systems help in application modernization.

Many businesses are finding it difficult to modernize their applications because of financial limits and worries about business interruption, data security, and cultural change.

Understanding how to modernize may be tough since cloud and on-premises infrastructures both have unique difficulties that enterprises must address. Concerns to operating applications on-premises include high costs, restricted scalability, and the requirement for continuous skills/support. In contrast, frequent issues with cloud-based application deployment include data security, loss of control, and application security. Each deployment technique is effectively a solution to the primary difficulties of the other way, emphasizing the significance of hybrid cloud.

Because of these many hurdles, most businesses are not rushing headlong into the cloud when it comes to updating huge, mission-critical workloads. Instead, 58% are pursuing a more progressive approach, seeking to update on-premises first and then selecting what to migrate to the public cloud as needed. Eighty-two percent of IT executives from firms that now utilize enterprise-class servers and storage expect such systems will play an increasingly essential role in supporting crucial business workloads in the future.

Download Forrester's whitepaper to learn more about Enterprise Cloud Application Modernization only on Whitepapers Online.