Application modernization is essential for organizations striving to stay competitive in an increasingly digital world. While it brings significant benefits, the process is often more complex than anticipated, resulting in delays, budget overruns, and unmet goals.
At intive, our experience working with customers across industries has revealed the most common challenges businesses face. Let’s explore these hurdles and why treating modernization as an evolutionary, step-by-step journey is key to success.
1. Modernization is not (always) a revolution
Many organizations approach application modernization as a complete transformation, expecting immediate results. However, modernization should be an incremental process, carefully planned to minimize disruption. Often, the decision to modernize is driven by a lack of continuous iterations over time, which leads to significant technical debt.
One of the biggest mistakes is treating it as a lift-and-shift operation – moving applications to the cloud without optimization. While this may seem like a quick win, it often leads to higher operational costs, as applications are not designed to run efficiently in cloud environments.
Instead of leveraging cloud-native features, companies end up replicating on-premises infrastructure in the cloud, leading to excessive spending.
2. Unplanned costs can spiral out of control
When modernization efforts are not well planned, budgets quickly spiral beyond initial estimates. The assumption that a simple migration will immediately bring cost savings is often wrong.
Running monolithic applications on cloud virtual machines instead of refactoring them for containers or serverless architectures leads to unexpectedly high costs. Over time, these costs can exceed on-premises expenses, making modernization feel like a financial black hole.
A major pitfall is getting caught up in lengthy, high-level consulting reviews, especially when modernizing multiple workloads, which can further delay progress and drain resources.
3. Scalability options: choosing between monoliths and microservices
Many legacy applications were designed before cloud-native concepts existed, making scalability a significant challenge.
Traditional monolithic architectures often struggle to scale effectively, leading to performance bottlenecks as user demand grows. While microservices are commonly seen as the go-to solution, they introduce their own complexities. In some cases, organizations get stuck between an outdated monolith and an incomplete modernization effort, creating a hybrid model that doesn’t fully leverage the benefits of either approach.
4. The never-ending modernization project
Many organizations begin their modernization journey with ambitious plans, aiming to complete the transformation in two years, only to find themselves years later with little to show for it. The complexity of the process can lead to delays, budget overruns, and technical deadlocks. In some cases, millions are spent, yet the final product remains unfinished or never reaches production. Unclear milestones and shifting priorities contribute to modernization efforts that seem to stretch forever, with no clear end in sight.
5. The risk of parallel systems and endless testing
Even when modernization is technically successful, full adoption often proves difficult. Bug fixes or architectural changes may cause the modernized application to function differently from the original, leading to hesitation among stakeholders. As a result, companies end up running old and new systems in parallel, prolonging testing phases and delaying full deployment.
This prolonged transition period drains resources and creates uncertainty, preventing teams from moving forward with confidence.
6. Integration challenges: the forgotten dependencies
Modernizing a single application can be difficult, but modernizing an interconnected system is even harder.
Many legacy applications rely on hidden dependencies, some of which are poorly documented – or not documented at all. Without a clear dependency roadmap, teams struggle to determine which system should be modernized first.
In some cases, the only person who understood the original architecture has left the company, leaving critical knowledge gaps. This creates bottlenecks, forcing teams to reverse-engineer dependencies before making any progress.
7. The skill gap: a barrier to successful modernization
A critical roadblock in application modernization is the widening skill gap, closely tied to a shortage of experienced resources.
Many organizations lack in-house expertise in modern deployment practices, cloud-native architectures, and microservices-based development. Even when these gaps are identified, building internal knowledge or hiring the right talent proves to be a significant challenge.
Traditional hiring processes often fail to assess the skills required for modernization, forcing companies to rethink their recruitment strategies. Meanwhile, upskilling existing teams requires structured training programs that can be difficult to implement effectively.
One final point - sometimes engineers that were involved in the original design are often resistant to change as they may not always see the immediate benefits of modernization, making it essential to clearly communicate how these changes will improve maintainability, performance, and future scalability.
Without addressing these limitations, modernization efforts stall, leading to delays, inefficiencies, and failed initiatives.
Embrace Modernization as a Step Toward Growth
While the road to application modernization can be challenging, it should be seen as an opportunity rather than an obstacle.
Modernization is an evolutionary process – one that drives greater efficiency, scalability, and innovation. By treating modernization as a step-by-step journey, businesses can unlock the full potential of their systems and transform their operations for the future.
Curious about overcoming these challenges? Our next article will dive into key strategies for a smooth modernization journey. Stay tuned!
Looking for expert guidance? Get in touch with intive to discuss how we can support your modernization efforts and provide a blueprint for success.
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