With digital transformation across the world, especially post-pandemic, most healthcare firms have recognized a need to upgrade and deploy their old, outdated software solutions. According to Markets and Markets research, the global legacy application modernization services market is predicted to increase at a 16.8 percent CAGR from USD 11.4 billion in 2022 to USD 24.8 billion in 2025. In this blog, we focus on strategies you can use to modernize your healthcare legacy applications. Read on!
Legacy application modernization is when a business updates its existing software applications with newer technology so that workflows are streamlined, integrations improved, and features added to support both current and future needs. It involves updating the data center, for instance, migrating to the cloud, re-working the codes, etc. Healthcare organizations and healthcare IT product companies modernize their applications and products for many reasons:
1. Cost Savings – Maintaining legacy applications can be difficult and expensive. For example, the more data a business collects, the more it must pay for its on-premise data center. Additionally, a large data center necessitates a specialized IT team to manage it. Legacy application modernization eliminates the requirement of on-site data centers as everything gets stored and maintained on the cloud. This, in turn, eliminates the need for additional IT maintenance expenses and licensing costs.
2. Improves customer experience – Application modernization can improve your users’ experience. It automates laborious tasks, provides agility in adding new features, and gives real-time data extraction capabilities. Healthcare companies can quickly and easily access any records or data they need to improve patient care. In addition, users can easily navigate through modern applications. Thus, improving customer relationships. Furthermore, outdated software applications can have security flaws that can lead to user data breaches, harming the reputation of your brand.
3. Increases productivity and business agility – A legacy system can have a lot of disadvantages that slow down business operations. For example, businesses tend to lose many clients due to the lack of agility and productivity, which root back to the system being inefficient and obsolete. The modernized cloud-based applications take employees’ minds off of maintenance issues and allow for remote working capabilities, which leads to increased productivity and business agility.
4. Enhances security – With legacy application modernization, organizations can improve their IT security by getting and applying timely patches and updates. Modern hardware and operating systems have the newest strategies to tighten security. Businesses don’t have to monitor security measures continuously and save time as security features get updated automatically. Also, they follow all compliance norms as mandated by healthcare regulators.
While it does take time and effort for application modernization, the benefits are substantial. Here are strategies that can be used for application modernization:
1.Rehosting or “Lift & Shift” – This is the most popular method of modernizing legacy applications. It is the process of moving the resources of your legacy application, such as storage, compute, and network resources, from the on-premise data center to the cloud. The application codebase remains the same, but the infrastructure is transferred to cloud-based IaaS. Migrating resources to the cloud can be a great way to save on costs and as a disaster recovery option.
2. Refactoring or rearchitecting – The process of refactoring an application typically involves rewriting one or more components of the application in order to take advantage of public cloud services. It also involves repurposing the languages and using APIs to communicate between services.
This can also involve refactoring the monolithic application into a legacy 3-tier application design, or breaking it down into a collection of micro-services that can be deployed and managed separately. This approach allows for more control over the application, as well as benefits such as business agility, faster time to market, and the ability to reimagine the customer experience.
3. Rebuilding – This process involves redesigning an existing legacy application into a cloud-native format that expedites innovation and lowers overall operational expenses. Given advancements in technology and frameworks, the effort necessary to construct the old program could be far greater than the effort required to replace it today.
4. Replacing – This process includes retiring old technologies and adopting new ones. This can be done by rehosting data from an on-site server to a cloud server and replacing proprietary plugins and tools with industry-standard and open-source ones. For instance, you can replace your on-premise version of software applications with AWS and Google Cloud, as it offers cloud-based services and is more relevant in these times. These services are available as a pay-as-you-go subscription, rather than a purchased license. Replacing your legacy application with cloud-native SaaS products ensures that your solutions are always up-to-date, provide great security, and support from outside the organization.
There are many options for legacy application modernization, but each business needs to choose the approach that aligns with its strategic priorities. All modernization options come with benefits, but they can be complex and challenging. A more efficient way to achieve modernization is by partnering with an external solution provider like Boston Technology Corporation.
Boston Technology Corporation (BTC) has the knowledge and experience to help your business scale its app performance. We can analyze your app to see where improvements can be made and then guide you through the process of making those changes. To learn more about how we can help, click here.
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