The Ultimate Five-Step Roadmap to Modernizing Legacy Applications

To successfully navigate a path forward, IT leaders need a strategic roadmap for application modernization initiatives. The plan should include prioritizing which apps to upgrade, aligning the effort with district goals, getting stakeholder buy-in, mapping dependencies, creating data migration checklists and working with trusted partners to get the job done.

Step 1: Prioritize Apps to Modernize in Line with Business Objectives

First, schools should conduct an assessment of their application portfolios to determine which apps are eligible for modernization. This can help IT leaders prioritize which apps to upgrade. It also gives teams a comprehensive picture of the entire application portfolio: performance, health, average age, security gaps, container construction and more.

“Having an inventory of all of your applications can help you avoid duplicative investments and paint a clearer picture of how that application fits into your organization’s long-term strategy,” says Greg Peters, founder of CDW’s Strategic Application Modernization Assessment (SAMA).

K–12 IT leaders should be particularly aware of apps that vary between school sites if purchasing is not done at the district level. Often, there may be redundancies that could be eliminated to save schools money and minimize IT complexity districtwide.

Another way to reduce operational costs might involve moving a school’s or district’s legacy applications to the cloud, as this lowers data center expenses from the balance sheet.

Once IT leaders have goals established, experts at Microsoft recommend assessing the financial and technical health of each application. From there, teams can finalize modernization plans for each workload and budget the resources required for success.

DISCOVER: What is an application modernization assessment?

Step 2: Get Stakeholders on Board Early

It’s critical to get administrator and stakeholder buy-in. K–12 leaders from across departments and school sites should be involved in the process. Doing this early helps foster collaboration and minimizes resistance to change. It can also give all stakeholders a clear picture of what’s currently in use, what’s needed and where funding might be found.

Stakeholder involvement promotes transparency, enhances decision-making processes and ultimately increases the likelihood of successful modernization.

Step 3: Map Data Dependencies and Where School Data Will Reside

The next step is to map dependencies before beginning the modernization. 

“Even a minor change to the functionality of a core system can have major downstream effects, and failing to account for any dependencies on legacy apps slated for modernization can lead to system outages,” Hitachi Solutions notes in a post.

Taking this step is a smart way to “prevent potential disruption and ensure a smooth transition for end users,” Hitachi states.  

READ MORE: What should school IT leaders focus on when modernizing applications?

IT leaders also need to make sure that no data is lost when migrating legacy applications to new platforms. The same is true if teams are working to rewrite or transform applications.

“To prevent data loss when migrating applications from on-premises environments to cloud platforms, institutions should create checklists that detail how data needs to be migrated, how that data should be presented once it’s in the cloud and what testing needs to be done to ensure data accuracy,” Hitachi notes.

Step 4: Select the Right Modernization Approach

At this point, IT leaders should decide which application modernization technique works best to upgrade their legacy software, and they can choose from among several options.

1. Rehost:

Also known as a “lift and shift,” rehosting allows the IT team to move applications from on-premises environments to the cloud with minimal changes. This quick migration is affordable and allows schools to keep the core architecture of any app intact.

2. Refactor:

With this option, IT staff can rewrite portions of the application’s code to optimize apps for cloud environments. This can improve overall performance in the cloud and make it easier to maintain.

3. Rebuild:

If the software requires an overhaul, IT may opt to rewrite the application from scratch while maintaining its original scope and specifications.

4. Replatform:

With replatforming, an application is moved to the public cloud but is first overhauled to make it more like a cloud-native app, often via containerization.

5. Retain:

During a modernization effort, IT leaders may decide to leave some applications alone, especially those used by relatively few people.

6. Retire:

In some cases, IT leaders may decide that an application is no longer necessary and should be retired. This would involve disposing of software responsibly and stopping its renewal cycle.

7. Replace:

If it’s too hard to salvage old software, teams may opt to replace it entirely with new, off-the-shelf products or a Software as a Service option. Often, the price of investing in a new tool is significantly cheaper than maintaining older software.

Each of these platform modernization approaches has distinct benefits, but all of them give legacy systems new computing functionality.

Step 5: Solicit the Help of an Expert Tech Partner

No matter which route an organization decides to take when it comes to modernization, IT leaders should partner with trusted third parties to complete the work. Tech experts can help create roadmaps tailored to the district’s objectives and its financial and technical capabilities.

“Organizations may find it helpful to work with a trusted third-party adviser when conducting assessments, especially if they have limited technical resources,” Peters says. “Having an outsider’s point of view can also help appropriately rank and prioritize applications.”

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