Digital transformation—that is, the practice of taking existing business processes or workflows and realigning them with modern technologies—has been given new urgency during the global shift to remote and hybrid work. Organizations that once took a cautious, wait-and-see approach to their own digital transformation roadmap are now actively reviewing initiatives like cloud migration, automation and the creation of dedicated DevOps task forces.
A significant part of digital transformation involves modernizing legacy applications. This process takes existing applications that aren’t cloud-native and adapts them using modern frameworks and APIs in order to take advantage of the functionality offered by new technologies.
To give a practical example of application modernization: An accounting team, now working full- or part-time from home, uses a software suite that only runs on Windows desktops. In the not-too-distant past, you’d be stuck keeping these legacy systems running and trying to find some way of giving users remote access to that business-critical software.
An app modernization strategy comes at this problem from a different angle. By replatforming and rearchitecting legacy software, existing apps can instead be designed to meet your users where they’re at.
An Overview of App Modernization
The main takeaway on application modernization is that there are many paths to get there. We recently outlined an app modernization process using available Microsoft platforms—but, as we also point out in the same article, that represents just one of many modernization approaches. The modernization journey will in fact look different for every organization based on its unique business needs. And, of course, its budget.
However, a lot of professional guidance on app modernization projects takes several things for granted. For one, it assumes a certain familiarity with the cutting edge of software development, so there will be a lot of talk about refactoring legacy apps by leveraging new application architectures or rehosting legacy systems by means of various microservices. Companies that don’t have DevOps teams at their disposal or business models that allow for major IT projects will instead get referred to external legacy application modernization services.
As a result, app modernization has acquired a reputation for being incredibly complex and very expensive. But that doesn’t have to be the case. Among the many options for transforming legacy software into modern applications, there are straightforward and cost-effective solutions available to everyone from enterprise-scale organizations to independent software vendors (ISVs).
3 Easy Steps for Legacy Application Modernization Overnight
Modernizing a single legacy app or even an entire application portfolio is possible in three easy steps.
- Sign up for a free trial of Cameyo. You’ll have the choice of utilizing our fully hosted version in Google Cloud or Azure. Or you can self-host Cameyo in your own cloud environment or on-premises datacenter. It works wherever you work.
- Follow the simple self-guided instructions on how to publish your applications in Cameyo. This process is all point-and-click using an intuitive GUI with icons and drop-down menus. There’s no coding or software development involved.
- Give people convenient, secure access to the full desktop version of your legacy application, running in any HTML5 browser, with just a few clicks in Cameyo. Your end users will be able to work with your apps as if they were cloud-native, running them anywhere and on any device with the exact same user experience they already know.
That’s all there is to it. You’ve just completed your app modernization project and achieved a huge leap in your digital transformation.
The speed and seamlessness of Cameyo’s Virtual App Delivery (VAD) platform helps to ensure that there are no disruptions to productivity. The scalability of Cameyo allows you to publish new legacy applications and add new users without anything close to the resource investment and operating costs of replatforming or refactoring solutions. And the inherent optimization of Cameyo delivers an outstanding user or customer experience even on BYOD or ultra-mobile devices.
As such, Cameyo’s business value is unmatched. Whereas most app modernization initiatives warn of “minimal changes” and require at least some software development skill, Cameyo retains all the functionality of the existing desktop app with zero redevelopment effort. You get a solution that can support modern workloads and agile work environments, yet it works with your existing software, hardware and IT resources.
How Businesses Are Modernizing Their Legacy Applications with Cameyo
Global enterprises and regional ISVs are using Cameyo to make software-as-a-service (SaaS)-enabled modern applications out of their existing software solutions.
- Moblize provides a powerful suite of cloud-based AI and Big Data solutions for the oil and gas industry. By combining the strengths of Cameyo and Amazon Web Services (AWS), Moblize was able to reach new levels of scalability while giving its customers a seamless user experience across multiple platforms. “We needed to take all of these legacy desktop apps and bring them into a cloud environment so that anyone, from anywhere, can access them on any device – even tablets and non-Windows laptops. The fact that Cameyo is so much less complex than other solutions enabled incredibly quick time to market,” said Moblize CM\EO Amitt Mehta
- ClienTrax was looking at a 4-year replatforming process when it aimed to SaaS-ify its popular desktop-OS veterinary practice management application. “In order to continue to compete, we knew we needed to redevelop our application for the web. Cameyo not only eliminates the cost and complexity but it is also incredibly simple to use – both on our end and for our customers. There’s simply no more secure, cost-effective and simple way to deliver any app to any device from the web,” said ClienTrax Director of Operations Craig Markus.
- Faced with software development costs of $2 million and an 18-month refactoring timeframe for its enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, Brazil’s Tático ERP was unhappy with any of its app modernization options. Then they discovered Cameyo, which created a cloud-native solution out of the existing application. ”Almost overnight, Cameyo made Tático available to users on tablets, Chromebooks, Apple devices – anything!” said Tático CEO Henrique Netzka.
Whether you’ve got a small set of users who need anywhere, any-device access to a legacy application or you’re an ISV who wants to take an existing application portfolio to the cloud, Cameyo makes even the most daunting app modernization projects into something quick, easy and cost-effective. Starting your rapid modernization journey is as easy as signing up for your free trial or requesting a demo of Cameyo today.