Modernizing software application ecosystems through agile integration, legacy app modernization, and AI integration for seamless, secure, efficient, and reliable digital operations

Modernization means updating an organization’s tools, systems, and processes to the latest version and best practices. It generally involves transitioning data, apps, and processes to a cloud-first approach. Artificial intelligence (AI) integration is also becoming a big part of modernization.

The main goal of modernization is to boost an organization’s IT performance. Better IT performance could mean faster processing, more efficient resource utilization, lower risks, or more desirable outcomes. This ultimately leads to improved customer and employee experiences, higher business agility, cost savings, and accelerated time to market.

• Agile Integration

• Legacy Application Modernization

• AI Integration

As organizations expand their digital footprint, data and apps often get trapped in silos, forming distinct boundaries between services, data sets, and digital processes. Historically, integration was possible through the implementation of an enterprise service bus (ESB) that would provide a central hub where apps could mutually share data. However, the ESB approach only works for legacy applications built on monolithic architectures. Modern applications run on decentralized, loosely coupled microservice architectures. A new solution is needed where no clear pathways or central points exist between applications.

Agile integration is a container-based, decentralized, microservices-aligned approach to integration solutions. IBM’s agile integration solutions enable seamless connectivity between applications, data, and devices, allowing apps to access unlimited data quickly, securely, and in real time.

Key Technologies

• IBM App Connect

• IBM API Connect

• IBM Cloud Integration Solutions

Unlock your business data silos, connect apps and assets, and bring unlimited scalability and functionality on any cloud or on-prem environment with IBM’s performance-focused agile integration solutions.

Unlock your data silos by transforming and moving bulk data in real time with easy-to-use, AI-guided tools. IBM’s distributed data integration aligns perfectly with microservice architecture on any cloud, on-prem, or hybrid environment, allowing for fast, secure, and seamless data transformations and transfers between independent apps, processes, and functions.

Build powerful APIs with IBM App Connect to link and synchronize different apps no matter where they reside. IBM App Connect simplifies flow development and integration with a no-code interface and AI-powered tooling and mapping. The platform supports multiple integration technologies, including event-driven messaging and API-led connectivity, allowing you to configure settings and policies for web, mobile, cloud-native, and legacy apps.

Integrate event-driven processes into your workflows. IBM Event Automation puts events to work, creating ultra-responsive user experiences that drive more user interactions over mobile, web, and social channels. The suite of no-code, AI-powered tools enables easy event processing and event endpoint management while ensuring clear visibility and unlimited control over multiple event streams.

In the fast-paced IT world, older devices and software applications quickly fall out of fashion as newer, faster, and more powerful versions roll out. A legacy app is an ageing software application that’s still in use. The problem with legacy apps is that they hinder much-needed innovation to keep up with the constantly evolving digital landscape. Legacy apps are riddled with performance, usability, and reliability issues.

Characteristics of Legacy Apps

• Outdated technologies

• Inefficient performance

• High maintenance costs

• Poor adaptability, flexibility, and scalability

• Security vulnerabilities

• Limited compatibility with newer software and hardware

• Low functionality and capabilities

• Unreliable operations

• Steep learning curve for users

IBM understands there’s much more to legacy systems modernization than simply trading the old for the new. It’s about transforming tried-and-true systems into more efficient, reliable, secure, and adaptable solutions. IBM’s modernization tools enable you to retrofit critical legacy systems with modern standards of digital capabilities while preserving data, governance, and workflows.

“Over two-thirds of global companies use mainframe or legacy applications for core business operations. 70% of global CXOs see legacy modernization as a top business priority” (Tata Consultancy Services and AWS)

How to Modernize Legacy Applications

Migrate your legacy app to a new environment, preferably the cloud, with minimal changes to its code and functionality. Rehosting is a quick modernization solution ideal for monolithic legacy software. Upgrading the runtime environment enables legacy apps to leverage cloud-native resources such as agile integration, microservices, and containers.

Optimize the software’s code to boost performance while maintaining the app’s core functionality. Breathe new life into the code to make the app more efficient, compatible, or scalable. Refactoring is an ideal modernization strategy when retrofitting a legacy app with modern DevOps practices and capabilities.

Redesign the legacy architecture to meet modern performance standards. Restructure some or all the software’s structures, how they relate with each other, or their runtime environment to address architecture-related bottlenecks and pain points.

Rebuild the legacy system from the ground up with efficiency, performance, and reliability in mind. Maintain the functionality but rebuild the software with better and newer technologies, methodologies, components, and architectures.

When a complete system replacement is necessary, IBM has your back with a suite of low-code and no-code development solutions. IBM Engineering Systems Design Rhapsody, for example, helps developer and engineering teams model, simulate, build, test, and implement software designs quickly and efficiently.

• IBM App Connect

• IBM API Connect

• IBM Engineering Systems Design Rhapsody

Put AI to work by integrating AI technologies into your digital workflows. Free your staff from repetitive, mundane, low-value tasks and boost customer and employee experiences through AI-powered automation. Artificial intelligence brings a whole new dimension to app modernization.

“35% of global companies use AI in their business” (Exploding Topics)

Key Technologies

• IBM Watsonx AI

• IBM AIOps Solutions

With the help of generative AI, you can consolidate business data from multiple sources and formats into a central knowledge hub. This will serve as a single source of truth for both internal and external queries. An AI-managed information hub shares and preserves crucial organizational information.

Optimize the software’s code to boost performance while maintaining the app’s core functionality. Breathe new life into the code to make the app more efficient, compatible, or scalable. Refactoring is an ideal modernization strategy when retrofitting a legacy app with modern DevOps practices and capabilities.

Take advantage of AI-generated data and content to test IT models and relay information to employees, stakeholders, and customers. Synthetic data helps simulate real-world scenarios when testing or developing complex data centers and highly integrated systems. AI-generated text turns data into concise, digestible, and natural-sounding bits of information.

Reimagine the customer experience with virtual integrations with conversational AI. Incorporating AI into customer touchpoints is the key to personalized customer experiences—creating unique avenues for targeted marketing and offering added value through customer-centric products and services.

Up your IT management game with artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps). Introduce human-like reasoning, judgement, and learning into managing and optimizing your IT operations for maximum performance, cost efficiency, reliability, and security.

Some legacy systems work fine, at least for the most part. Why fix what’s not broken? Modernization is more about improving performance than fixing faults. A well-orchestrated modernization effort presents tangible advantages to any IT infrastructure.

The Benefits of Modernization

Modernizing legacy apps results in faster and more accurate digital processes. It expands a system’s capacity to access and process more data, communicate with other systems, and deliver results on demand. An improvement in IT performance directly translates to better business outcomes.

Legacy systems are notoriously complex. A single software application may have dozens of standalone dependencies, such as specific hardware, runtime environments, I/O formats, etc. These unnecessarily add to IT complexity and footprint. Modernization trims redundancies and streamlines software operations.

In the increasingly digital-first world, cybersecurity and compliance are ever-growing concerns. Legacy software may have outdated security protocols, making them unsafe and non-compliant. App modernization improves a system’s security posture by upgrading security measures and eliminating vulnerabilities.

“58% of companies modernize legacy applications to improve security” (Statista)

Running legacy systems is often costly. Maintaining outdated systems requires skilled hands and constant vigilance, and their low performance is severely taxing. Modernization makes for more cost-effective IT operations by minimizing downtime, learning curve, and dependencies. An efficient system boosts productivity, improving the bottom line even more.

Do not frustrate your customers or employees with sophisticated legacy software applications. Transform your legacy apps into contemporary solutions with intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces. Better user interface and experience (UI/UX) bolsters employee morale and customer satisfaction.

• With the generative AI capabilities of IBM Watsonx, a collecting and reporting agency for marginal part-time jobs now take 75% less time to write and publish an article. (Read the full case study)
• A high-tech manufacturer deployed IBM App Connect to establish data connections across its wide range of solutions, including Enterprise Resource Management (ERP), Manufacturing Execution System (MES), Supplier Relationship Management (SRM), and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). (Read the full case study)
• A dairy company went from complex and undefined ad hoc infrastructures to streamlined operations by successfully integrating 32 legacy systems using IBM integration solutions. (Read the full case study)
• With IBM API Connect, a digital platform operator of ready-made, compliant systems and APIs developed a solution that increased conversion rate 6x and significantly cut processing time. (Read the full case study)
• Thanks to IBM’s modernization solutions, a research institute cut development costs by 30% and reduced the time required to integrate software applications into hardware resources by 40%. (Read the full case study)

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