As systems mature, they become increasingly challenging to maintain. For example, developers can face issues in introducing new features or handling a large number of user requests at once. This lack of flexibility and scalability can hinder app development progress and make it difficult to remain competitive in a constantly evolving market.

However, updating legacy systems can be daunting, especially for businesses with multiple applications and complex technology stacks.

That’s where app modernization comes in.

App modernization involves updating and improving old software applications to keep up with modern technology trends and meet new business requirements. This process enhances existing applications’ functionality, performance, scalability, and security.

So, let’s delve into the significance of app modernization, how leveraging components can simplify the process, and how Bit provides a robust method to future-proof this approach.

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Why Is App Modernization Important?

Modernization efforts involve more than simply updating technology or refreshing the technology stack. By taking a holistic approach to modernization, organizations can also identify and address pain points that may be hindering progress and move forward more efficiently.

Benefits of App Modernization

• Optimize application performance and make them more responsive.
• Improve scalability to meet the needs of growing user bases or increasing data volumes.
• Improve security by adding advanced security features, such as encryption.
• Reduce the costs associated with maintaining legacy systems.
• Improved data management.
• Enable new features and functionality that were not possible with legacy systems.
• Allows to ship new features faster.

However, despite these benefits, most organizations often struggle or opt out of modernizing large-scale, complex applications due to several challenges.

Challenges of App Modernization

• It’s not always possible to completely understand the system in question
• Modernization can cause disruptions to ongoing business operations.
• Understanding and updating legacy codes and architectures can be difficult and require specialized knowledge.
• Systems may not be well-documented, and unique features implemented in the past may not have been updated or forgotten.
• There can be hidden dependencies, making it challenging to identify all the parts of the system that need to be modernized.
• Modernizing a large-scale software application can be expensive and time-consuming.
• The updated system should be compatible with other systems and applications that the organization relies on.
• Can be challenging to convince stakeholders that investing time and resources into modernizing a system is worth the effort.

Furthermore, the effort required to modernize a single application often competes with the development resources needed to build new features. Prioritization is crucial in this process, as it can determine whether resources are allocated to building new functionality or modernizing existing ones.

As priorities may shift during the modernization process and new issues may arise, it is important to continually reassess and adjust priorities to ensure that the most critical areas are addressed first.

However, by carefully considering the goals and objectives of the modernization effort and involving stakeholders in the process, organizations can build support and ensure that modernization efforts are successful.

‘Evergreen Modernization’ Using Components

When talking about app modernization, a common issue seen with many migrations is that it can be complex and challenging, as every decision can have far-reaching implications and dependencies. Ideally, every technology and product development decision should be made on a “greenfield”.

One approach to address this challenge is composable developement. Organizations can achieve greater flexibility and easier maintenance by building different features as independent, isolated components.

When you develop components using a composable approach, you can gradually integrate them into your app. You can use any tech stack you like since the components are versioned and built independently.

These components can be deployed more efficiently into the application, providing increased flexibility and easier maintenance, and making every decision a greenfield project.

This is when Evergreen Modernization comes into play. Every new feature modernizes your app further, helping to avoid the creation of “muddy fields” and allow the best solution for every business problem at hand.

Overall, composable development can help organizations manage technology migration more effectively and achieve their modernization goals.

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Example: How to Integrate a New Framework Into an Ember.js App

Here, I will use an Ember application to explain how a new framework (in this example, React) can be integrated into an application built using an older framework. Tools like Bit helps developers to further improve this process by providing an independent environment to design, develop, test, and version components in isolation, and then compose them together.

The first step is to create a small workspace in the development directory that contains independent React components, each with its own dev server to build at. We can then embed these components into the Ember code base as needed.

Here I have created 2 React components. One basic component and another with a Tailwind configuration. We can run these components independently from the Ember application since each component has its own independent development cycle and build pipeline.

Watch Demo: Integrating a new framework into an Ember.js app

This method allows you to quickly create and integrate more independent components into our workspace, which can be used to build new functionalities or refactor existing ones into more modern code.

Using a tool for component-driven development, like Bit, developers can transition to architectural patterns like micro frontends with legacy applications, which can enhance efficiency and ensure compatibility with backend microservices.

Since every Bit Component has its own dev environment, they do not depend on the existing stack of the app being modernized. This allows developers to treat every feature as a greenfield opportunity and better align modernization efforts with business requirements.

By slowly chunking away the legacy features and modernizing them, you can refactor and modernize the code base while still pushing new features.

This approach is fairly similar to breaking down a monolithic backend application into microservices. The team can then build one microservice that speaks with the monolith, and all the monolith components will speak only to the specific microservice. With this modernization strategy, the team can gradually move towards a codebase that will endure for a long time.

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Reusing New Components Across Multiple Apps

As mentioned, components built with Bit can be exported and shared between teams and scopes, allowing other applications to use them.

Here’s an example of how teams effectively collaborate with components

Since these components are completely independent of each other, you do not need access to an entire repository to make a change. You can import the component you wish to change, modify, and export it to a Bit scope that updates its usage.

Furthermore, each component will have a separate documentation, test environment and dependency graph. The development team can iterate and improve the components separately before integrating them back into the project by modernizing the code and having the components run independently from the project.

Future-Proofing Your System and Reducing Risk

In application modernization, reducing inherent risk is key to success.

By using Bit components and design patterns like Domain-Driven Design, developers can isolate specific areas of an application or specific features to improve or embed a new feature into a legacy system.

This approach allows developers to start small without significant effort or cost. You just have to pick a feature, build it as a separate component and integrate it with the legacy system. If it does not work, you can easily reverse the modification.

Since these components are independent, developers can iterate on them and make informed decisions about technology and other factors while keeping the company, business, team, and product flexible and open to future changes.

For example, if React becomes obsolete and a new framework is introduced in a few years, you can easily update your application component-wise without any breaking changes.

In summary, it’s important to build a system that allows for making evergreen decisions without limiting future requirements, features, or capabilities. By doing so, we can drive a successful modernization effort for our stack, product, and technology.