Software has been around long enough that well-established companies must make major upgrades if they have not already done so. In the upgrade process, legacy applications commonly need to be migrated, and infrastructure typically requires re-platforming. This monumental task relies heavily on product engineering and development experts. Here is everything companies need to know about software product modernization.
What is software product modernization?
Software product modernization is a complex upgrade process involving converting, rewriting, or porting legacy applications onto new languages, architecture, programming, and protocols. Along the way, new functionalities are integrated to align the software with current customer needs, give the business a competitive advantage, and optimize operations.
Elements of Product Modernization
No one-size-fits-all framework exists for product modernization because the starting point and desired end goal vary widely between companies and products. However, there are some key elements that most product modernization processes set their sites on, such as:
Analytics
Nowadays, software products rely upon vast data sets and sophisticated analytics to identify patterns, correlations, and trends in the data. Through product modernization, companies gain access to rich, probabilistic models based on large volumes of data, and they can run analytics as events happen in real-time. This allows for insight into data and information that is otherwise hidden and opens up opportunities for dynamic future growth.
Automation
In traditional software product models, many tasks must be completed manually. This is inefficient and can increase the risk of human errors. With software product modernization, automation is crucial to success. Production cycles happen in weeks rather than months or years. Continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines enable automated code building, testing, and deployment so that companies can achieve lighting-fast time to market.
UI/UX
One of the most popular goals in software product modernization is to rebuild the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) based on the target audience, platform, use cases, and more. Strong UI/UX is crucial for the final product's success and is essential for sustaining the customer base through the modernization processes. Prioritizing UI and UX ensures a seamless user experience in the transition and rollout of upgrades.
Architecture
Part of what makes product modernization so complex is that it typically requires completely rethinking how the product is built and making changes from the ground up. The product must support many users, process large volumes of data, leverage data for measurable intelligence, adapt quickly, and speed up the delivery of new versions to customers to thrive in the modern market. An advanced architectural framework is essential for supporting and driving these capabilities.
Tech Stack
Another major upgrade involved in software product modernization is changing the tech stack. Legacy or traditional solutions commonly need to be replaced with innovative solutions that align with the current goals and objectives. Upgrading a tech stack is also important because it helps companies improve security and adhere to the most up-to-date data and privacy regulations.
Security and Compliance
One of the major pushes toward software product modernization is the need to adhere to the most up-to-date security and compliance standards supported to the fullest extent by legacy systems. Modernizing the software product allows for full compliance and prepares companies to scale the approach as standards for user authentication and management, data encryption, activity logging, and disaster recovery evolve.
Cloud Adoption
Another significant difference between modern and traditional software products is compatibility with the cloud. Companies must modernize to take advantage of the cloud's benefits, such as scalability, flexibility, and cost efficiency. Cloud adoption also makes it easier to adopt microservices and containers essential for modern software applications.
How to Do Product Modernization
The software product needs to be reactive, fully automated with CI/CD, able to process multiple forms of data, capable of using and producing advanced analytics, and accessible across various devices and channels to be thoroughly modern.
Generally, there are two distinct approaches to product modernization - incremental or radical.
- Radical product modernization addresses all of the changes simultaneously. Parallel teams work on changing different parts of the software at the same time. The goal is to move away from legacy systems as quickly as possible.
- Incremental product modernization addresses changes individually and then integrates them with the broader application architecture later.
Both approaches make the platform faster and scalable - enhancing performance, lowering costs, avoiding code duplicity, and helping manage complexity.
Advantages of Product Modernization
Here are the top five benefits companies can expect from product modernization:
- Improve the customer experience by enhancing the user interface, introducing new features, and optimizing performance.
- Drive growth by meeting new customer demands and adjusting to market changes. Product modernization adds new features and capabilities so businesses can expand their market reach, appeal to new customers, retain existing customers and expand to new revenue streams.
- Achieve a competitive advantage through agility and responsiveness. Product modernization allows companies to adapt to industry shifts, quickly changing customer preferences, and new technologies to position themselves as industry leaders.
- Maximize speed and productivity with advanced, more efficient, scalable, and adaptable software solutions. Software product modernization allows faster development lifecycles and deployment through CI/CD.
- Minimize costs and risks through increased efficiency and robust protection against security vulnerabilities. Software product modernization lowers the overhead and risk of security issues so that companies can save money associated with downtime, data breaches, and emergency repairs.
Encora and Software Product Modernization
Encora is deeply expert in software product modernization. Our product engineering and development team provides a custom re-engineering framework to upgrade legacy applications, products, and platforms.
To learn more about Software Product Modernization and get started, contact Encora today.
