Enterprises are giving a second thought in regards to modernization since the business needs and demands are changing rapidly in today’s unpredictable world. The enterprise leaders are now concentrating upon simplifying complex business environments, improving agility to meet consumer demands, and increasing the level of pace over the whole enterprise technology infrastructure. However, the path towards modernization isn’t really a cakewalk. You will have to go through a lot of difficulties in order to reach your desired goal. But the fear of facing such obstacles must not stop you in fulfilling your endeavor. So, in this article we shall witness today all the barriers that you will come across during the enterprise modernization process. And most importantly, I will also tell you how to overcome them and eventually, win your game. 

Challenges during the process of enterprise modernization

Taking you through the barriers which come along the effective enterprise modernization process. 

To maintain a proper momentum

If you step towards modernization without having a proper approach then things can go really wrong. Since the modernization projects are huge, it's necessary to smartly plan out the journey at first, and then look forward to taking the essential steps with ease and control. You can start your journey by focusing on applications which hold the shortest path to value. Such quick wins enable you to exhibit the value of modernization from the very start and help your team to skillfully build momentum in the very beginning stages of modernization, overcoming all the technological challenges with proper strategic planning. 

To have a clarity on what your business exactly wants

Enterprise modernization is not just only about cloud migration. It takes a broader look at the enterprise’s complete technology estate and abilities to identify what change is required in order to make the business more adaptable and flexible. It is very important to have a clear business goal at the beginning and then plan out the entire modernization process step-by-step. But at the same time, your team needs to have some prior experience in order to work in such types of modernized cloud environments. So, along with some experience, your team must prioritize the various significant digital initiatives which can help in overcoming any kind of technological challenges, leading to successful enterprise modernization. 

To embrace the change across your organization

In this process of modernization, the applications are meant to support various business functions, so that every application which is being modernized is able to represent an important cultural and operational shift for your engineers, developers, and enterprise. But if the change is not planned, supported, and managed well, then your team won’t be comfortable to efficiently work with the modernized applications. Also, it is not beneficial to solely depend on architects and cloud experts for guiding your enterprise through this process. Rather you also need to emphasize their skills which need to be boosted with specialist change management proficiency. And, along with having clarity on how the modernization process enables the enterprise to accomplish its strategic goals, you need to make all the teams familiar with each of the modernized applications, if you do not want to see any of your projects failing in the transformation journey. To know more, understanding agile transformation and the business impact of it can help.

To get funding for your modernization projects

Modernization requires sufficient funding but again it’s hardly an IT budget. So, it becomes a major challenge for the IT managers and most of the executives reveal deep dissatisfaction regarding their helplessness to exhibit business value or even return on investment (ROI) from the various modernization initiatives. Also, the present business value of the supporting applications and infrastructure, agile systems, and the result of delaying modernization work is not well communicated which further leads to more difficulties. Therefore, the IT executives need to find proper means in order to build a strong connection between modernization and operational issues, like reducing revenue, lost competitive advantage, and poor regulatory compliance, to attain the necessary funds. 

To stop thinking that modernization takes time

One more obstacle to modernization is the opinion of considering the modernization projects to be too lengthy. I agree that they can be complicated and need a sufficient amount of planning and time validation besides performing the upgrade process. Moreover, with any of the projects, the longer the timing, the more time-consuming it is to understand the benefits and the more possibility that it might be canceled or suspended. The IT enterprises require to find means to clearly define the entire modernization roadmap, take gradual steps, keep updating the needful business and IT plans, and continue to progress on the journey. 

To have a proper balance between modernization and maintenance

It is observed that 70% or in fact more of IT budgets are allocated to the support and maintenance activities so that the daily operations can run smoothly without any concern. Now, it is really difficult to shift the focus and funding to modernization and maintain a proper balance. As the business and IT concerns are always kept in the front, the modernization projects tend to fall at the bottom of the priority list. The IT executives find it challenging to keep a balance between modernization and maintenance, and therefore will have to find a way out to overcome this concern. 

To maintain the service levels

Enterprise security, reliability, availability, and scalability are some of the significant benefits experienced by legacy applications. IT managers get worried about adopting newer technologies like Java and .NET, as they might bring major service quality issues once deployed. Also upgrading to the latest operating system levels and hardware technology can reduce the performance of aging applications that were not well designed to operate in these environments. Therefore, gradual modernization approaches are required which can easily consider the quality of service needs and requirements, model the production environment even prior to deployment, and also deliver a seamless transition.

Overcoming the challenges

This section will provide you with an insight into how to overcome the barriers that come along with the modernization process. Take a look below.

Aligning IT with the business

The very first significant step in regards to modernization is the proper alignment between the IT and business strategies within the enterprise. This step identifies the necessary improvements that fit well with the entire business strategy, recognizing opportunities in order to align with the company vision, and deciding a good strategic plan. So, such an alignment will need high levels of collaboration and mutual trust among leaders on the investments required to accomplish the desired business results like flexibility, cost savings, and business acceleration. Also, when business conditions are unpredictable, the business and IT need to reconsider plans frequently, and along with that continuous feedback and metrics can help in both shaping and reshaping modernization activities. 

Simplifying and enhancing IT

You will find that excessively complex systems hamper enterprises from concentrating on their strategic agendas. The aging IT estates tend to run up costs, disrupt quality and slow up the rate of change. Therefore, for cost optimization, enterprises can execute a technology refresh which consists of lean processes and automation, enhancing workload placement, and removing unutilized or underutilized systems, services and data. The enterprises can constantly improve the IT environment with automated workload management tools and execute software-defined networks. Also, modernizing IT can free up resources and budgets which can be instantly applied to innovation, driving new services, and a step towards the cloud. 

Modernizing applications and data

Most of the traditional organizations face difficulty in determining and executing a workload placement strategy for traditional and cloud environments as well. The barriers can be both technical and financial. But such barriers can be overcome by modernizing or transforming the application and justifying the business case for every application on a case-by-case basis. Such an application rationalization procedure consists of workload placement, finding out where an application and data shall live and how it will deliver the best service to the ones using it. Once the business priorities get established, the enterprise is able to assess and rationalize the application (leading to cost savings), transform or modernize the application (allowing speed, agility, and further savings), or even deploy a cloud-based operating model, while taking into consideration the safety, performance and financial necessities. 

Operating and securing hybrid at scale

Most of the big enterprises need to maintain a hybrid IT estate in the near term, therefore, they require an operating model which can make sure that the business is able to respond to the market changes and can continue to safeguard a much wider ecosystem as cloud resources develop. It is seen that in a modern hybrid IT environment, enterprises can constantly innovate, provision IT assets on demand and offer consumption elasticity while removing IT’s traditional fixed assets. Also, managing this kind of hybrid architecture brings challenges that consist of the requirement to scale and integrate cloud systems with the present IT environment. Consequently, the enterprises feel the necessity to build strategies in order to work in harmony with resources, cloud, and data centers. So, the new operating model guarantees integrated operations, the capacity to leverage analytics, intelligent automation at scale, AI, and lean procedures for better insights, efficiency, and speed. 

A holistic approach and support is the key

Enterprise modernization can be considered as an evolution that is a combination of transformations in architecture, business culture, and applications. In order to succeed, each and every aspect of evolution shall be considered as a part of a holistic modernization strategy. Such a strategy can be developed by having a clear and distinct vision of what you want to accomplish, at the same time incorporating the perfect combination of capacities, proficiencies, and technology. 

Here is a research conducted by Skytap which uncovers the realities about enterprise modernization. Taking a look at it can be very beneficial. 

Check out these videos on elevating enterprise modernization and overcoming the barriers during the modernizing process.

 

Learn more:

• Legacy systems modernisation
• What business leaders should know for a successful business modernisation

Conclusion

With this article, I made sure that you get an easy understanding of the commonly seen barriers of enterprise modernization. And, also find the solutions to overcome them and succeed in experiencing a seamless enterprise modernization. But now it’s up to you how carefully you let your organization adopt the necessary steps and initiatives.