Challenges and Strategies for Modern IT System Landscapes

Current system landscapes are characterized by a large number of different systems and applications. These applications have often grown historically and require an ever-increasing amount of maintenance. In addition, these systems were often developed by colleagues who are no longer with the company.

This situation often results in a large backlog. This backlog is not only filled with functional requirements for the respective system, but the reduction of technical debt is also repeatedly placed on the development agenda. At a strategic level, the alignment between business and IT strategy plays an important role. The structure of the information technology should support the business organization in the best possible way. Many organizations want to become more agile and dynamic or build cross-functional teams. To achieve this, however, the IT systems used must be flexibly adaptable and capable of continuous further development. This is often implemented by developing a system landscape that is broken down into small parts and containerized (microservices / self-contained systems). However, this is difficult to achieve with structures characterized by legacy systems or requires a high level of investment.

On the other hand, the operation of in-house IT resources is also becoming increasingly challenging. Your own on-premise data center should meet functional and non-functional requirements, have a wide range of certifications and be operated in the best possible way in terms of IT security and digital sovereignty. However, the professional operation of your own data center means intensive commitment to core tasks such as infrastructure management, security management and patch management. Supporting processes such as hardware procurement, provider and partner management and appropriate facility management should also be implemented as efficiently as possible.

One way to meet these challenges is App Modernization. At its core, this involves extending the service life of existing IT assets and increasing their value at the same time. The aim is to achieve a target state based on best practices and established standards that enables state-of-the-art software development processes. These processes can be carried out for individual software systems as well as for the overall architecture of the organization. A central element of this app modernization can be the development of a cloud-ready or cloud-native architecture. This involves transferring existing services to the new world. By focusing on the wide range of offerings from specific providers, dedicated cloud benefits can be utilized. These include the use of high-quality PaaS services to optimize operating expenses or the rapid integration of innovative services such as artificial intelligence.

Furthermore, reengineering can be used as part of an app modernization process to focus on reducing technical debt in the system and optimizing the architecture of the system to meet expected business requirements. For example, the scalability of a system that will be confronted with increased demand in the future could be strengthened. The benefits of DevOps practices could also be exploited by carrying out an app modernization. The target system is transferred to an agile deployment model either individually or in the context of the overall system. This change enables organizations to carry out rapid releases and relieve developers and architects of communication and release processes.

The modernization of applications, especially in the context of a cloud transformation, is often a complex process that can pose numerous challenges.

Many existing applications were originally developed for local environments. A migration to the cloud can often require extensive adjustments to ensure that the applications can be seamlessly integrated into the new environment. Applications are often found with Windows client applications, which may even be accessed via a remote desktop connection. In many cases, old database systems are also in use, some of which have business logic implemented in proprietary code. In addition, interfaces of the system components must be considered and possibly revised. Modernizing these applications can be very costly.

The migration and modernization of an application can give rise to various security risks. Secure cloud architectures must be designed, implemented and tested in order to prevent attacks on the applications on the infrastructure side. This requires the implementation of robust security measures such as encryption, access controls and regular security checks. In addition, the source code of the application itself must also be checked for possible security vulnerabilities and adapted if necessary.

Migration and modernization in the cloud must be carefully planned, as otherwise the costs for the infrastructure can quickly exceed the budget. In addition to the ongoing operating costs for the cloud components and the modernization of the code, costs for employee training and testing the new environment should also be factored in.

The performance of applications in the cloud may differ from what was available in the local data center. Higher network latencies due to more widespread infrastructure components, but also changed architecture in the course of security considerations, can have a significant impact. The modernization of applications in the cloud often also requires organizational changes. Development processes have to be revised, build and deployment are supported by other products. This can cause adaptation difficulties and resistance.