Like vintage cars can be modernized with restoration, so can be your systems. Wondering how? It’s Enterprise application modernization that can breathe new life into your legacy systems. This way, you can maximize (squeeze every last bit of value from) your past investment while future-proofing it!
Legacy apps weren’t built for today’s pace, leading to slow updates, mounting security risks, and rising costs. As your app scales, the burden only worsens, stalling innovation and stretching resources thin. The engine weakens, parts are scarce, and maintenance costs soar — sounds familiar? A company with legacy apps faces the same challenges as demands grow.
However, like vintage cars can be modernized while restoring, your systems can also transform. Continue reading to understand how Generative AI fits into the modernization strategy.
The legacy modernization paradox: Why do leaders hesitate?
Application modernization updates legacy systems with modern technologies, boosting speed, adaptability, and cloud readiness through practices like DevOps and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC). The journey may be complex, but the payoff—speed, resilience, and adaptability—is worth it.
These modernization strategies may vary based on business needs, goals, and budgets. Companies often choose one or a combination of these approaches:
Each strategy helps businesses explore new potential while aligning with their unique modernization goals. However, the reality of legacy application modernization can be daunting.
30% of CIOs admit that over 20% of funds meant for new products are instead spent fixing technical debt. With modernization efforts often exceeding 16 months and costing at least $1.5 million, many companies hesitate. Is this fear justified? Here are a few more stats:
Clearly, tight deadlines, limited budgets, and the sheer complexity of legacy systems are often the most significant roadblocks to the success of modernization projects. Moreover, many enterprises find cloud migration offers limited value, agility, and speed beyond basic automation.
But what if you could modernize your applications faster and more cost-effectively than ever? How would that reshape the potential and agility of your business operations? With Generative AI (GenAI), this goal is within reach.
Let’s explore how GenAI can revolutionize your modernization journey, overcoming the challenges that have held businesses back. In other words, let’s discuss how CIOs and CTOs can leverage its power to simplify, de-risk, and accelerate their transformation journeys.
4 ways GenAI accelerates the application modernization journey
Gartner predicts that by 2026, over 80% of enterprises will leverage generative AI, either through APIs or AI-powered applications, driving the future of business innovation. As discussed, traditional modernization efforts often face common challenges.
Here’s how generative AI provides powerful tools to address these challenges and accelerate your modernization journey:
Enhances documentation quality and code generation
Poor documentation in app modernization hampers developers’ understanding of legacy code, business rules, and logic, leading to errors, inefficiencies, and delays. Moreover, deciphering complex or outdated code without clear context increases the risk during migration or upgrades.
Generative AI helps in enhancing documentation quality by optimizing the coding process. Here’s how:
- GenAI translates legacy COBOL to Java, breathing new life into decades-old systems and generating clear documentation.
- Intelligent code commenting by GenAI enhances readability and maintainability, summarizing complex logic and explaining coding methodologies in clear, natural language.
- GenAI keeps documentation in sync with code changes, ensuring accuracy and saving precious developer time.
- Fosters knowledge sharing by diving deep into the functionalities and protocols of legacy APIs and facilitates collaboration, reducing guesswork and improving team efficiency.
Tools like Amazon CodeWhisperer help extract essential business logic and rules. Enterprises can leverage Large Language Models (LLMs) to analyze, convert, and test modernization approaches.
For agencies with vast legacy systems, modernization has become faster than ever. What once took 6–7 weeks to assess 10 COBOL apps can now be done in just days with GenAI!
Tackles high cost and technical debt
App modernization is an expensive and complex undertaking, particularly for enterprises managing broad portfolios with hundreds of business-critical applications.
The financial burden is significant, and failed modernization efforts often lead to wasted time and resources. This inefficiency puts organizations at a disadvantage against competitors who, unencumbered by legacy systems, can innovate and adapt more rapidly.
Technical debt aggravates the problem, accumulating across IT infrastructure in areas such as outdated code, fragmented architecture, and incomplete documentation. Addressing this debt involves identifying, prioritizing, and resolving deeply entangled complexities—a monumental challenge for developers.
McKinsey reports that GenAI can cut manual work, speed up tech modernization by 40-50%, reduce tech debt costs by 40%, and enhance output quality. How does generative AI achieve this?
For example, a transaction processing system for a leading financial institution that would have cost over $100 million to modernize three years ago can now be upgraded using generative AI for less than half that amount.
Bridges the skill gap in maintaining and managing monolithic architecture
Maintaining monolithic applications during modernization can be daunting due to their complex, tightly coupled architecture, which makes it difficult to implement changes without affecting other parts of the system.
For executives, the real hurdle is not just keeping old systems running but adapting them to meet evolving business needs and stay competitive. As CIOs take on more strategic roles, they must balance maintaining operations with driving innovation.
Meanwhile, architects face a growing talent gap. 93% of enterprises are struggling to retain skilled developers. Finding developers skilled in maintaining outdated systems is challenging, especially as many are shifting focus to cloud technologies.
Moreover, the ongoing talent shortage means developers command high salaries, making the challenge even more daunting. Generative AI helps navigate this concern by accelerating coding. How?
Facilitates API generation and integration
Legacy systems are notorious for their chaotic data organization, with information scattered across databases that lack clear connections. Communication between these systems is difficult, as they lack the well-designed APIs needed for smooth data exchange.
Instead of efficiently retrieving targeted data, these outdated systems often drag in irrelevant information from all corners, creating unnecessary complexity. Generative AI simplifies app modernization by automating the creation, integration, and management of APIs. Here’s how:
- Creates APIs from existing application code, enabling seamless interaction between legacy and modern systems speeding up modernization.
- Analyzes and maps legacy systems to modern APIs, bridging the gap without manual effort.
- Generates clear, detailed API documentation, aiding developers, especially when working with complex legacy systems.
- Identifies inefficiencies, optimizing API performance and security for scalability.
- Automates testing and debugging, ensuring smooth system interactions.
- Enables quick, efficient API customization tailored to specific business needs, with no coding expertise required.
For example, OpenAI Codex, the engine behind GPT models, can automatically generate APIs by interpreting existing code and producing relevant API definitions. It can help create API endpoints and data mapping between legacy systems and modern applications.
To sum up, here’s how GenAI contributes to application development across its various stages:
Partner with Techwave for a seamless application modernization journey
As a business leader, if you can fathom the benefits of GenAI, it can ease your dilemma about embarking on modernization projects. If you want to understand further its potential to invest confidently, you will need more than just advanced tools—you need expert guidance and execution.
Techwave is your ideal partner for consulting on and implementing application modernization. As a leading AI/ML service provider, we blend deep industry expertise with advanced GenAI capabilities to deliver a seamless, scalable transformation.
With proven methodologies and a strong track record, Techwave ensures you harness GenAI’s full potential, mitigate risks, and align your modernization efforts with business goals.
You can also check out our success story to learn how we helped a leading a premium healthcare management company to overcome multi-user limitations and modernize their legacy management platform.