Legacy Modernisation: A High-Stakes Initiative
Legacy modernisation is rarely straightforward. IT leaders must balance minimising downtime, ensuring data integrity, maintaining security compliance, and optimising costs – all while keeping business operations uninterrupted.
Additionally, the modernisation journey itself presents several risks that must be managed effectively:
- Operational Disruptions: Transitioning from legacy systems can introduce unforeseen technical challenges, impacting workflows and business processes.
- Data Integrity Challenges: Migrating and transforming critical data without loss, corruption, or inconsistency is a key risk during modernisation.
- Regulatory Compliance Issues: Ensuring that modernisation efforts align with industry regulations and evolving compliance requirements is essential to avoid legal and financial consequences.
- Business Continuity Concerns: A poorly planned or executed modernisation project can lead to prolonged downtimes – affecting service delivery, customer experience, and financials.
- Integration Complexity: Modern applications must seamlessly connect with legacy components and third-party ecosystems to maintain operational efficiency.
- Unclear Return on Investment (ROI): Without a strategic approach, organisations risk investing in solutions that may not yield the expected cost and performance benefits.
A one-size-fits-all approach rarely works in legacy modernisation. The complexity of existing systems demands a strategic and flexible approach that mitigates risks while ensuring seamless transitions.
The Multi-Strategy Approach to Modernisation
Instead of betting everything on a single modernisation strategy, organisations are increasingly adopting a multi-strategy approach—leveraging a combination of the following methodologies based on system complexity, business goals, and risk tolerance:
- Rehosting (Lift and Shift): Moving applications to the cloud with minimal code changes to reduce infrastructure costs and improve scalability.
- Risk Reduction Benefit: Fastest approach with minimal disruption, providing immediate scalability without rewriting code.
- Refactoring (Code Optimisation): Optimising and restructuring code to improve performance and maintainability while keeping core functionalities intact.
- Risk Reduction Benefit: Reduces technical debt while preserving business logic, ensuring a smooth transition with fewer compatibility issues.
- Rearchitecting (Cloud-Native Adoption): Restructuring applications to leverage modern cloud capabilities like microservices and containerisation.
- Risk Reduction Benefit: Enhances system resilience, scalability, and security – paving the way for making the overall application ready for a data and AI world.
- Rebuilding (Rewriting Applications from Scratch): Some legacy applications may be too outdated for refactoring. Rebuilding involves developing a modern version using new technologies.
- Risk Reduction Benefit: Future-proofs applications by eliminating outdated dependencies and enhancing integration with AI/ML and automation.
- Replacing (Full System Overhaul): Phasing out legacy systems with an off-the-shelf or custom-built solution that offers enhanced functionality.
- Risk Reduction Benefit: Eliminates maintenance costs and security vulnerabilities associated with legacy systems while enabling faster innovation.
By strategically combining these approaches, organisations can significantly minimise risks, ensuring business continuity while gradually modernising their overall IT landscape and set of applications.
How Merit’s Approach Proactively Reduces Modernisation Risks
Merit’s proven modernisation methodology is built on a risk-first mindset, leveraging the following assets to ensure smoother transitions:
- Fitment Analysis Framework: A consultative approach to identifying the best modernisation strategy tailored to each organisation’s specific IT and business needs.
- LLM-Enabled Code Conversion Tools: Automate code transformation with AI-assisted refactoring, reducing human errors and accelerating modernisation timelines.
- AI-Ready Architecture Frameworks: Provide future-proof modernisation strategies that seamlessly integrate with AI/ML capabilities.
- DevSecOps and Test Automation: Enhance security and predictability, ensuring software is continuously tested, validated, and secured throughout the modernisation process.
Success in Action: How Merit’s AI-Led Modernisation Cut Costs by 30% and Improved Scalability
A leading UK-based construction intelligence provider needed to modernise its core data sourcing system. Their legacy application couldn’t scale, lacked efficient support for new technologies, and struggled with AI-driven automation. It also had security and compliance risks.
Merit used a combination of rearchitecting, refactoring, and phased adoption to modernise the system with minimal disruption:
- Architecture modernisation: Upgraded core applications using Merit’s web app framework for better performance and scalability.
- AI-Led Code Conversion: Converted legacy PERL code to Python, making processes faster and more efficient.
- DevSecOps Integration: Automated testing and deployment to improve security and system stability.
- Optimised Data Processing: Used prompt engineering templates to convert code to industry standards like PEP-8 and OWASP.
The results?
- 20% to 30% lower operational costs due to modern, efficient code.
- 40% boost in developer productivity, speeding up debugging and prototyping.
- 30% faster product releases, improving time-to-market.
- More reliable and secure systems, reducing downtime.
A Smarter Way to Modernise
Modernisation doesn’t have to be risky. With a multi-strategy approach, IT leaders can balance speed, cost, and long-term sustainability while ensuring business continuity and security.
Merit’s AI-driven modernisation frameworks, DevSecOps automation, and tailored fitment analysis help organisations identify the right modernisation strategy with minimal risk.
Need a roadmap for your legacy modernisation? Connect with Merit’s expert consultants to explore a tailored modernisation strategy for your business.