Modern businesses are not only measured by their operational success, but also by the extent to which they are able to understand and meet customer needs. Applications become a bridge that allows direct and personal interaction between companies and customers. Customer engagement supported by intelligent application use can create memorable experiences, strengthen customer loyalty, and solidify a company’s position in a competitive market.
However, despite the great potential of applications, many companies still depend on old applications that may no longer be in line with the demands of the times. Therefore, modern applications or application modernization become a strategic necessity. Through application modernization, companies can deliver innovation, increase operational efficiency, and prepare to face future challenges.
This article will discuss in depth the essence of modern applications, why application modernization is needed, as well as strategies that can be taken to face changing business dynamics.
What are Modern Apps?
Modern applications refer to software that goes through a modernization process to upgrade its platform infrastructure, internal architecture, or features. The main focus of application modernization is on monolithic applications which are generally run on-premises and then upgraded using the waterfall development process. This transformation was carried out with the aim of integrating applications into the cloud architecture and utilizing more flexible release patterns, such as microservices and DevOps.
The benefits of application modernization include increased speed of delivery of new features, exposure of existing functionality through APIs for consumption by other services, and transition of applications from on-premises to the cloud to improve scalability, performance, and data center performance.
The main challenges in application modernization involve aspects of cost and complexity. Moving applications to the cloud without considering ROI levels often does not provide maximum value. Meanwhile, some applications may require significant updates but are closely tied to existing systems and infrastructure, so the complexity of modernization may outweigh the resulting benefits.
Success in application modernization ultimately depends on a well-thought-out strategy and the selection of modernization projects that can provide the best benefits in terms of speed, performance, scalability, and customer experience, thereby achieving optimal return on investment.
5 Main Advantages of Modern Applications
In the dynamic business world, application modernization is not just a necessity but the main key to achieving a competitive advantage. Beyond stability, scalability, and security, modern application modernization is the foundation for responding to new market opportunities, increasing efficiency, and achieving optimal customer engagement.
Based on the Forbes report, there are five advantages of application modernization such as:
1. Reduce IT Expenditures
A study by Forrester Consulting shows modern applications can increase ROI by 228 percent, NPV by US$30.0 million, and reduce application development infrastructure costs by 40 percent.
2. Security and Performance
Modernization to a secure, high-performance platform supports innovation and customer experiences that build loyalty. Multi-layered security support can reduce costs and increase application uptime.
3. Data and Resources
Enterprise integration in the cloud creates a seamlessly connected application development environment, enabling companies to generate new insights from data and compete in a rapidly changing business.
4. Maximize Scalability and Resilience
It can serve millions of sites, process billions of requests, and has an SLA of 99.95 percent, ensuring your application is always available and reliable.
5. Faster Innovation
Through cloud-based services, developers focus on development rather than infrastructure maintenance. Migrating to modern applications positions teams to quickly take advantage of the latest opportunities and technologies.
What Technology is Needed to Build Modern Applications?
The main step in starting an application modernization project is conducting an application assessment. After that, there are several modernization steps you can use to reduce risk and costs while still moving your application portfolio in the right direction. Some of these approaches include:
Observability
Ensure applications can be properly observed so they can be understood and monitored effectively. This involves using tools and practices to increase visibility into application performance and behavior.
Building Microservices
Decompose monolithic applications into small, independent components, known as microservices. This approach increases flexibility, scalability, and makes development and maintenance easier.
Application Distribution
Distribute applications in cloud environments for increased scalability, performance, and more efficient resource management. Typically, this involves using a cloud platform for hosting and providing applications.
To implement more efficient observability, microservices, and application distribution solutions in building modern applications, CDT provides an integrated solution of Dynatrace, AWS, and Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform. With this combination of technologies, companies can optimize application performance, increase development flexibility, and ensure a consistent and secure user experience.
1. Observability with Dynatrace
In carrying out an application modernization strategy, choosing the right solutions and tools is the main key. For example, by using Dynatrace Platform Software Intelligence’s multicloud observability platform, you can simplify cloud management of complex applications.
Supported by advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) features powered by Davis AI, you can also easily get deep insights across application and cloud environments. Starting from metrics, logs, traces, to topological models complete with distributed tracing, code-level details, entity relationships, and user experience.
So, in conclusion, this platform not only provides information about events in the cloud environment and applications, but also proactively addresses issues before they impact the user experience. It’s not just visibility, it’s a solution to detect, analyze and overcome challenges effectively.
2. Building Microservices with AWS
In the journey towards more adaptive application transformation, microservices architecture on AWS is key. Whereas previously applications were bound in complex monolithic structures, AWS’s microservices architecture brings fundamental changes.
For example, in a monolithic architecture, all processes are closely related and run as a single entity. In effect, when one process experiences a spike in demand, the entire application must be scaled. Not only that, adding or enhancing features to monolithic applications is increasingly complicated. Often experimentation and implementation of new ideas are hampered by this complexity.
However, by moving to AWS’s microservices architecture, applications are restructured into independent components that operate as separate services. Each service is built for a specific business function, and can be updated, distributed, and scaled independently. This provides greater flexibility and reduces application availability risks.
By using AWS microservices architecture services, you can not only overhaul the way applications operate, but also provide the tools and services needed to build a robust and adaptive microservices ecosystem.
3. More Efficient Application Distribution with Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform
Akamai’s Intelligent Edge Platform enables you to transform complex, multi-platform environments into secure, consistent user experiences. With a single set of security controls on your application, you can reduce the resources or expertise required to monitor application security.
Apart from that, there are several other advantages of the Intelligent Edge Platform, including:
- Users access enterprise applications through the Intelligent Edge Platform, ensuring an additional layer of security and control
- Edge servers automatically fight DDoS attacks at the network layer and inspect web requests to block malicious threats such as SQL injections, XSS, and RFI
- Efficient identity management, as user identities are assigned using identity stores across multiple locations, such as on-premises, cloud, or Akamai
- Access is granted only to required applications, not the entire corporate network
- Optimize application performance and reduce cloud bandwidth costs
- Directs authorized and authenticated traffic to relevant enterprise applications, ensuring efficient traffic distribution
- Flexibility in selecting data center applications, such as on-premises, IaaS, or SaaS
Create a Modern Application Strategy for Your Business with CDT
It’s time to strategize your business application moderation with Dynatrace, AWS, and Akamai only at Central Data Technology (CDT). CDT as an authorized partner of Dynatrace, AWS, and Akamai will help you carry out the application modernization process, so that you optimize application performance, increase development flexibility, and ensure a consistent and secure user experience.
Supported by a professional, experienced and certified IT team, CDT will also help you through the stages of consultation, deployment, management, and after sales support so that you avoid trial and error. Interested in using Dynatrace, AWS, and Akamai? Contact us immediately by clicking the link here.
Author: Ary Adianto
CTI Group Content Writers
