Organizations spend 60-80% of their IT budget on legacy systems. This is due to a lack of interoperability, technical debt, or software entropy.

In addition, 80% of the world’s corporate data is stored on or originates from mainframes, exposing a dated IT strategy and approach.

Despite businesses’ increased desire to upgrade their systems, many programs fail or experience delays due to insufficient planning, a lack of awareness of the old environment, or a lack of mainframe modernization competence. Others are even yet to comprehend the value of modernization. This is dangerous.

To stand a chance to compete with new entrants and keep up with tomorrow’s digital transformation transitions — not to mention saving annual expenditures, you must prioritize legacy software modernization. With this in mind, here are the steps to follow when modernizing the legacy software:

Understand your systems

Before beginning any application modernization project, it is important to identify what tools and systems are in the organization’s portfolio. To ensure that all systems and applications are in place, you must audit the primary tools (i.e., COBOL, CA Gen, Natural, etc.) and secondary programming languages (i.e., Easytrieve, Assembler, etc.).

When doing it, include where and how these languages are used – as well as examine how the organization’s data infrastructure is stored (i.e., files, relational databases, etc.).

Align the modernization to the organization’s end goal.

A successful modernization project requires understanding both the end objective of the organization and the process to get there.

The first step should always be a thorough review of the company’s requirements. You can find a suitable alternative to your old system by thoroughly understanding what a good system entails and how a new solution would provide the necessary flexibility, agility, and inclusion.

Some of the goals you can have include:

• Planning a consolidation with another organization, so you need to change your framework.
• Need to link your framework with the logical programming you recently sent, but you are not sure reconciliation is possible.
• The number of employees who use your framework is rapidly increasing, so you need to make it customizable.
• You spend most of your IT budget on upkeep and only a small amount on providing value to your clients and you want to reduce the expenditure.

Take time to research.

Do you need a replacement for the system in question? First, see if there are more modern solutions to the problem. People tend to repeat prior behaviors. Is this problem still relevant? These are the key topics you should address first.

When you set your objectives, you have an excellent time to assess whether your framework supports your company strategy or if a component of your framework prevents you from achieving your business goals.

Your research should involve:

Stack check. When your framework is based on obsolete software, your RD team should replace it with superior alternatives during execution.

Design survey. Whether or not the technology stack is crucial, a thorough assessment of your framework is required. An engineering survey will allow your technical specialists to see which components of your framework are working correctly, which need to be updated, and how different parts interact.

Code survey. Old codebases frequently require a thorough survey and restructuring.

UI/UX configuration audit. Legacy systems frequently have usability concerns. That is why conducting a thorough UI/UX audit is also necessary.

If you aren’t sure how to do a thorough research hire a software modernization services provider to help you.

Choose a modernization strategy.

There are plenty of strategies you can use to modernize your software. The most popular ones are:

Replatform

This involves applying minimal changes and migrating the legacy system to another platform. This allows you to preserve the existing code structure. At the same time, it allows the software to be hosted on a lower-cost operating system or platform.

There aren’t too many features and functions to modernize when dealing with this strategy, making it fast and straightforward.

Reface

This technique involves shifting a larger volume of data from the legacy system to the graphical interface. As a result, even ancient and out-of-date systems may appear modern, with up-to-date user interface features.

This technique can save you a lot of money on licensing fees without requiring the development of new technology. Refacing is ideal when:

• Your staff has great expertise in the old technology and is ready for continuous upgrades.
• Your management staff is tethered to legacy software.

Rebuild

Rebuilding entails building the company’s legacy system from the ground up. The only decision here is whether to rebuild the entire system or just the core components of the software portfolio.

That is an extreme strategy, but it still gives the maximum ROI and competitive advantage for several years. Consider reconstructing your legacy system when:

• You can no longer support changes with the current system.
• Your underlying technology is no longer supported.
• Your current system and technologies are too expensive to license.

Extend and migrate

Expanding and moving your old software is frequently the most well-balanced and consistent software improvement technique. This allows you to combine the lowest risk (and thus the expense of failure) with a progressive transition to new components.

Consider extending and moving when:

• You are going to change the system from batch to real-time
• You only need to modernize the old data using the RDMS system.
• You don’t have many components driving your present business process.

Think about your data.

When creating a new system from the start, rather than updating old legacy software, you will be dealing with massive amounts of archived data. Your development team should carefully transfer everything to the new system to avoid loss.

Take care of data consistency between the two systems. Ensure that your data transfer technique has been thoroughly tested and proven to be dependable.

Don’t skimp on investing enough time to put things into action. The best solution is to keep the old system running and exit only after ensuring that the updated version has everything set up and functioning as expected.

Data loss is a crucial issue and one of the most common causes of concern during a legacy system update, and you should never take it lightly.

Among the most serious potential consequences is the loss of corporate data, which frequently results in direct income loss and various reputational risks

To be safe, have a well-thought-out action plan for data migration before beginning the migration.