Legacy systems pose a security threat because of their outdated frameworks. To remove this complexity, companies should modernize their applications, explained Moti Rafalin, CEO and co-founder, vFunction, a platform that helps companies transition from legacy systems to cloud.
Over time, legacy systems become so complex that companies find it hard to support and maintain them, thus increasing the technical debt. Even though engineers are convinced about the negative impact of technical debt on the business, 58% of companies still have no process for managing it, a Stepsize report highlights.
In this edition of Tech Talk, vFunction’s CEO shares ways to modernize the legacy systems to reduce the tech debt, moving beyond a ‘lift and shift’ cloud strategy, and prioritizing only those workloads that are best suited for the cloud.
Key Takeaways on How To Modernize Legacy Applications:
- Decouple your apps to remove complexity and increase engineering velocity.
- Retire the apps and systems that require constant supervision.
- Rewrite or rebuild the existing systems with the help of automated tools.Â
Here are the edited excerpts from our exclusive interview with Moti Rafalin, CEO and co-founder, vFunction:
1. What is a legacy application? Can you share an example of a legacy application?
You might say that any application that was not written recently–i.e., not designed for a cloud-based architecture–is a legacy application. It might be applications that were written based on old frameworks or outdated language versions, but really, it’s anything that one might feel that innovating for is not as easy as it used to be. This reduction in engineering velocity, in the speed of innovation, is the “legacy†that the application is carrying. This is usually understood to be synonymous with “technical debtâ€.
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2. What are the two main challenges of legacy systems? What business forces are compelling companies to modernize their applications?
The two main challenges of legacy systems are speed of innovation and code quality. Legacy systems over time become so complex and interconnected that it becomes extremely costly to the business to support and maintain them.Â
“Each release cycle is extremely long and every change impacts seemingly unrelated areas in the code which forces more testing and more changes. Legacy systems also pose significantly more of a security threat, because of their outdated frameworks that may carry unresolved vulnerabilities.â€Â
Companies should modernize their applications by decoupling their application services in order to remove complexity. This increases engineering velocity, and helps teams to reap the benefits of the cloud. This includes increased efficiency, agility and flexibility, reduced release cycle length, faster innovation, significantly reduced costs, the ability to scale operations effortlessly, and improved business performance.Â
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3. How do you modernize legacy applications? What types of changes are made to legacy systems?
Depending on budget and needs, cloud-ready organizations have several legacy application modernization strategies to choose from, including:Â
- Retire – Some companies choose to shut down the services and assets that no longer work for the organization. Shutting down applications requires constant supervision to ensure that the system doesn’t lose functionality.
- Retain – With a typical hybrid approach, the organization retains the parts of the architecture that works for them.
- Repurchase – Repurchasing is also called “drop and shop.†A repurchase cloud migration strategy refers to dropping part or all of the existing architecture and moving to new systems.
- Replatform – A modified lift and shift is called a replatform. A replatform requires some modifications to the platform but no changes to the application code itself.
- Refactor – Refactoring refers to re-architecturing one or more services or applications. Refactoring manually has been resource-intensive; using automated tools solves that problem.
- Rewrite – A monolithic application can become cloud-ready with rewriting, rebuilding, refactoring or re-architecting the current system. Rewriting manually has been resource-intensive; using automated tools helps solve that problem.
“We don’t advocate that you need to transform all your legacy applications into microservices. Most likely, you will find that a subset of apps makes sense to modernize depending on your business goals and needs.â€
 The reason we are able to recognize this is that our patented methods of automated analysis based on AI and data science display insights into the complexity and risk of making changes to your legacy applications.Â
Our analysis may reveal, for example, that some applications are better suited for a “lift-and-shift†strategy, whereas others should be retired. Applications that still drive business value can be refactored into microservices based on our recommendations.Â
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4. In what ways can companies gear up to handle their legacy data?
Data is hard to move and expensive to experiment on. Companies should gear up to handle their legacy software by first managing their business logic, getting to a better baseline with less technical debt, and then handling the legacy data.
See More: Three Security Pitfalls To Avoid During Your Cloud Migration
5. How can businesses realize the true benefits of the cloud?
The adoption of the cloud or cloud migration has only accelerated since COVID-19 – and I still believe that we’re only in the early innings of the cloud. In terms of realizing the true benefits of the cloud, companies often think that a “lift-and-shift†approach or even basic containerization will cut it.Â
However, they quickly find out that those approaches don’t allow them to take full advantage of cloud benefits like elasticity, agility, increased engineering velocity, and reduced cost.Â
“The only way to realize the true benefits is to modernize by refactoring legacy applications into microservices, which in turn allows all of those benefits.â€
6. Could you talk about what companies can do if they fail to achieve the anticipated benefits from their cloud investments?
If a team has migrated to the cloud and is not realizing the anticipated benefits, they should go back and review the specific migration strategy they pursued. This basically includes doing the analysis that should have been conducted before migration. This analysis should include a detailed review and assessment of every application to fit with the right modernization strategy.Â
“Some applications may require replatforming, while others may require refactoring or rewriting. Usually, companies fail to achieve the anticipated benefits from their cloud investments when they take shortcuts and prioritize speed over true value.â€Â
Lifting and shifting large monoliths without modernizing them more often than not will lead to increased cost since the public cloud expense of large instances to support the scalability of those apps will be higher than the on-prem alternative. In this case, modernization is needed to break those monoliths into microservices that fit cloud architecture’s elasticity.Â
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7. Which workloads are best suited to move to the hybrid cloud?
The cloud enables innovation, elasticity and agility. The workloads that one needs to innovate on, the ones that require most changes for the business, or the ones that are already built in a cloud native architecture, would be the best suited for the cloud.Â
Those workloads that have significant data gravity, or those that do not need many changes or updates, that are supporting the business without the need to change, could stay on premises.
8. In your view, which are the top trends in cloud to shape the future of the industry?
While not strictly a “cloud trendâ€, the shift-left movement is one of the most effective trends we have seen in the past years. Letting DevOps, developers, architects and managers understand and operate as close as possible to the cloud is something every organization should do more of. Shift-left for security is gaining significant traction.Â
“We expect the trend to expand to other disciplines beyond security to, for example system architecture: â€shift-left for architects†means removing technical debt before it actually impacts production.â€Â Â
In other words, continuous modernization coupled with continuous delivery and continuous integration will shape the future of the industry. Couple that with cloud native architecture, and you have a modern technology organization.
About Moti RafalinOpens a new window
Moti Rafalin co-founded vFunction and serves as its CEO. He brings over 20 years of experience in the enterprise software market to his role, with a focus on infrastructure, applications, and security. Prior to co-founding vFunction, Moti co-founded and led WatchDox from inception until its acquisition by BlackBerry, growing the company over 20 consecutive quarters and establishing it as a leader in the secure enterprise mobility and collaboration space. Subsequently he served as senior vice president at BlackBerry LTD.Â
About vFunctionOpens a new window
vFunction is the platform for developers and architects that intelligently and automatically transforms complex monolithic Java applications into microservices, restoring engineering velocity and optimizing the benefits of the cloud. Designed to eliminate the time, risk and cost constraints of manually modernizing business applications, vFunction delivers a scalable, repeatable factory model purpose-built for cloud native modernization. With vFunction, companies around the world are accelerating the journey to cloud-native architecture and gaining a competitive edge.Â
Tech Talk is an interview series that features notable CTOs and senior technology executives from around the world. Join us as we talk to these technology and IT leaders who share their insights and research on data, analytics, and emerging technologies. If you are a tech expert and wish to share your thoughts, write to [email protected]Opens a new window Â
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