How can we dismiss legacy apps?
Listen to the needs for change
Most customers that are around for more than a decade recognise the scenario that applications become legacy but cannot be dismissed since they are still heavily in used in day to day operations. Yet, the need for changes and extensions crop up.
A decision to changing the technology stack of critical application certainly is a difficult decision. We’ve seen multiple times over with customers of ours that such decisions were made after a long process with the central question: can we still responsibly postpone the migration?
Eventually you just have to bite the bullet. In specific terms, this means that we should embrace the momentum to migrate the application to a new technology stack.
Which stack?
It all depends. For example, do you have an IT department? What technology stack are they familiar with? Is your company already heavily invested in a certain vendor or technology? Are you considering a move to the cloud? If so, are you already ‘married’ to a certain cloud provider or not? Would you consider going cloud-native? The list goes on and on.
We’ll guide you through the decision process and evaluate the different options, lay them out, pro’s and cons.
We’ll make sure that you can make an informed decision about which technology stack is the best choice for your case.
Downtime?
You most probably will not. We have experience in doing tech stack migrations with a number of our customers and they have never ever suffered any downtime. Admittedly, it sometimes felt as if we were replacing a tire on a car racing at 100 mph but nevertheless we did it (and still can count to 10 on our fingers). This outlook may seem unreal, but it shows how we are entering into a completely new phase in surgical migrations. They key here is knowing what to do when, and how. Hard to explain, no exact science neither. More a craft than anything else, but you’re sure as hell better off leaving it to professionals if you don’t fancy downtime.
Big bang or gradually?
We are by no means fans of big bang approaches. We strive for a gradual migration, in which old and new co-exist and co-operate for as long as needed, so that no unreal pressure is noticed and downtime is avoided.
How long will it take?
It will take the time it needs of course, and that is completely dependent on the size of the legacy application that needs to be migrated. Nevertheless, our approach is focused on migrating the most valuable part to the business (ideally having none to little dependencies to the rest of the legacy application) first and working our way in and around to slowly but surely strangle the legacy application, leaving you with a brand application using a brand new technology stack.
Tech stack migration in a nutshell
- Listen for change needs
- Stop postponing
- Bite the bullet
Someday you'll need to bite the bullet
