Due to the complexity and design of legacy systems, it is not always a pink world to modernize most of them. Though there are a variety of modernization approaches depending on the project and the modernization objectives.
The legacy systems modernization approach might depend on the initial research of the application and potential risks of the transformation/migration process. The procedure for one application may change for another as these processes are dependent on the legacy application, development language, and architecture.
We should also consider The corporate plans, cost, risks, and results of the legacy migration/transformation process before taking action of the selected approach.
The application discovery stage helps to inspect the problems that a company has with its legacy system and develop a plan for the migration process.
The possible approaches are :
• Application modernization: Requires modernization and optimization of the existing code base without much changing the external and internal behaviour of the app. This process consists of updating the legacy application libraries and dependencies.
• UI/UX improvements: allow modernization of the user interfaces and interactions for better handling. It just renews UI technology in addition to adding some UI features.
• Re-architect: Optimization of the legacy application by re-architecting to better benefit from the capabilities of modern application platforms with improved or same functionalities and fixing the issues with the current architecture. Might require someone with in-depth knowledge of the legacy application or might take time to deep dive into the internals of the legacy application.
• Re-build: Rebuild the legacy system or part of its components from scratch with a modern tech stack. This approach might be an expensive option as it will need someone with knowledge of legacy application and its development language.
• Re-platform: the legacy software with migrating the legacy system to more modern and effective technology platforms.