Insights

Ways platform-led services can increase application modernization speed

Ravi Julapalli, Director, Enterprise Solutions for Cloud and DevOps

Application modernization done correctly can significantly improve speed to market, enabling response to changes in market demand and seizing new opportunities with agility. But companies pursuing application modernization must understand that the process can get bogged down without the right approach and solution. Companies often struggle to containerize and migrate their applications to the cloud, which can take months. However, with the right partner, they can accomplish the same while improving DevOps and DevSecOps maturity in much less time.

The reality is that many leading companies use platforms to drive quicker speed-to-market and create better solutions at scale, especially when it involves cloud migration.

But companies that attempt to transform to platform-based approaches can fail to reap all of the benefits if they don’t have the right partner guiding them. A holistic approach that assesses the full benefits of a platform against the changes needed will ensure success.

Quick takeaways

• The right partner is invaluable; they likely have decades of experience managing every type of portfolio modernization, from technical debt resolution to the deployment of microservices, all while being cloud-agnostic.
• While every application modernization approach is unique, platforms lean into previous experiences to maximize modernization speed while providing companies with incremental knowledge about how to maintain innovation.
• Using a platform/reusable solution-based approach created and managed by a trusted partner ensures increased speed-to-market.
• Platforms avoid unnecessary work by providing the best combination of customization and best practices.
• Platforms enable microservices, which makes applications easier to maintain, upgrade, and scale than traditional methods.

The best way to ensure an increased speed-to-market is using a reusable, solution-based platform created and managed by a trusted partner. The right platform leverages high-quality, reusable components, automated governance, quality controls, microservices and containerization.

Here are eight reasons why application modernization initiatives benefit from a partner-led platform:

1. A strong foundation: Companies that opt for just application modernization are often unnecessarily starting from scratch. While they may have internal resources to manage the process, they are unlikely to have repeatable frameworks to make it smoother and quicker while avoiding costly and time-consuming upfront customization.
2. Combine cost-savings and customization: Platforms don’t inhibit customization. In fact, they can automate much of the foundation that encourages customization, saving costs. Automated platform-led services can easily and cost-efficiently orchestrate any required future customization.
3. Accelerated speed to market: The whole point of application modernization is to get to market faster. If you are spending most of your time building the strategy for your application modernization approach, you are wasting valuable time. Teams must be able to deploy services, test and refine in days rather than months. Leaning on a proven platform ensures that no time is wasted.Platforms specifically enable microservices, an architecture that lets businesses deploy different components of an application independent of each other. It also provides greater standardization on key decisions about legacy technology, whether an application needs to be reengineered, refactored, refreshed, replatformed, or otherwise addressed.
4. Built-in automated governance and cybersecurity: A core component of any modernization strategy is moving applications to the cloud. Whether you refactor, reengineer, or replatform old applications to work on the cloud, it requires a rethinking of the policies and regulations that govern those applications.
   Cloud governance requires a dedication to security that many companies are unfamiliar with, so leaning on established principles is a huge time saver. The rise of DevOps and DevSecOps means companies need to prioritize security more than ever to keep in lockstep with the competition. Given there are so many established security principles, a platform provides robust governance without needing to build from scratch. Platforms also ensure companies have strong cybersecurity policies and technologies as threats increase and change.
5. Rapid and iterative collaboration: The right platform will likely have its runtime environment, accelerators, test automation and dashboards, enabling seamless testing of microservice architectures, AI models, and refactored applications.
6. Baked-in machine learning: The standardization of tools inherent in platforms simplifies the adoption of MLOps, helping companies run multiple machine learning models to produce better collaboration between operations and technology teams.
7. Maximize shared microservices: Platforms support microsystems, making prototyping applications efficient and effective.
8. Everything-as-a-code approach: As agile methodology has swept organizations, “everything-as-code” has become more popular. It involves treating the entire software development process, from ideation to delivery, as code that can follow strict guidelines. By hyper-leveraging reusable blueprints/components, the everything-as-code approach is more easily within reach. A platform provides the frameworks and methodologies to make everything-as-code simplified, so everyone on the project can focus on producing excellent work.

Tapping into decades of platform experience

A partner with a reusable platform can approach the problem with detailed knowledge application modernization best practices and industry pain points, challenges, and solutions.

The best way to ensure success is to find a partner that has the right team of transformation experts, a proven framework, and, more importantly, platform-led services. UST guides companies through a modular, comprehensive methodology that accelerates the modernization of their legacy application stacks, helping to build new, cloud-native applications.

In a digital world, developer productivity requires a platform that optimizes delivery effectiveness, empowers talent, enables inner sourcing, and accelerates Agile/DevOps maturity. The right platform can automate workflows, provide transparency across toolsets and deploy high-quality, reusable components while increasing new design and remediation speed and reducing costs.

UST understands the importance of platform-led services, which is why it offers UST PACE is a complete framework that unites foundational tools and capabilities into a seamless service. Designed to solve real-world customer challenges, it provides tools and access for developers to rapidly model, monitor, test, prototype, and deploy from a secure infrastructure.

Contact us today to learn more.