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iQsolutions

Enterprise Software Engineering

Application Modernisation

Re-architecting and re-platforming existing applications onto current frameworks, containers and managed cloud services to improve delivery speed, resilience and cost.

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Overview

Many applications are not legacy in the mainframe sense, yet they hold the business back: monoliths on end-of-life frameworks, servers patched by hand, deployments that need a maintenance window. They still deliver value, but every release costs more effort and carries more risk than it should.

We modernise applications with a portfolio view, deciding for each one whether to rehost, re-platform, refactor or retire. Then we execute: upgrading runtimes, containerising workloads, decomposing monoliths where boundaries justify it, and adopting managed cloud services, all while the application stays in production.

Business applications

  1. 01

    Portfolio rationalisation

    Assessing a portfolio of applications against business value, technical health and cloud readiness, then assigning each a disposition so modernisation investment goes where it will have the most effect.

  2. 02

    Runtime and framework upgrades

    Moving from .NET Framework to modern .NET, from Java 8 to a current long-term support release, or from unsupported front-end frameworks, closing security gaps and restoring access to maintained libraries.

  3. 03

    Containerisation and re-platforming

    Packaging applications into containers, externalising configuration and state, and moving them onto Kubernetes or managed container services with automated deployment pipelines, health checks and autoscaling configured from the start.

  4. 04

    Monolith decomposition

    Identifying domains that change at different rates or scale differently and extracting them into services, often starting with a modular monolith to reduce coupling before any physical split.

Engineering approach

  1. 01

    Portfolio assessment

    We gather code metrics, dependency data, operational history and business input for each application, scoring them to recommend a disposition and a sensible modernisation order.

  2. 02

    Modernisation blueprint

    For selected applications we define the target architecture, platform services and migration steps, including how data, sessions, file storage and scheduled jobs will move.

  3. 03

    Automated upgrade and refactoring

    Tools such as OpenRewrite and the .NET Upgrade Assistant handle mechanical changes, while engineers concentrate on design changes, dependency replacements and behaviour that tools cannot verify.

  4. 04

    Re-platform with safety nets

    Characterisation tests, parallel environments and gradual traffic shifting protect existing behaviour as applications move to containers and managed services, with rollback paths defined in advance.

  5. 05

    Optimise for the new platform

    After migration we tune scaling, adopt managed services where they reduce operational load, and refine observability and cost, so the move delivers more than a change of hosting.

Technologies and platforms

Assessment and refactoring

  • OpenRewrite
  • .NET Upgrade Assistant
  • SonarQube
  • CAST Highlight
  • Azure Migrate

Target runtimes

  • Java / Spring Boot
  • .NET
  • Node.js
  • Go
  • Docker

Cloud platforms

  • Amazon EKS
  • Azure Kubernetes Service
  • Google Kubernetes Engine
  • AWS Fargate
  • Azure App Service

Delivery and verification

  • Terraform
  • Argo CD
  • GitHub Actions
  • Testcontainers
  • OpenTelemetry

Technology names are trademarks of their respective owners and do not imply partnership or endorsement.

What you receive

  • Application portfolio assessment with a disposition for each application
  • Modernisation blueprint and target architecture per application
  • Upgraded, containerised applications with automated deployment pipelines
  • Characterisation tests protecting existing behaviour
  • Infrastructure as code for target environments
  • Post-migration review of performance, cost and observability

Questions leaders ask

How is application modernisation different from legacy system modernisation?

Legacy modernisation typically addresses deeply embedded core systems, such as mainframe or COBOL platforms, where replacement happens capability by capability. Application modernisation focuses on applications built on more recent but aging stacks, where framework upgrades, containerisation and cloud re-platforming are the primary moves. Many programs involve both.

Do we have to break our monolith into microservices?

No. Microservices solve specific problems, such as independent scaling and independent team deployment, and they introduce distributed-systems complexity in return. A well-structured modular monolith on a modern platform is often the better target. We recommend decomposition only where domain boundaries and team structure justify it.

Can modernisation happen without stopping feature development?

In most cases, yes. We sequence work so modernisation proceeds alongside the roadmap, using branch by abstraction, feature flags and incremental migration rather than long-lived parallel branches. Some steps, such as a major runtime upgrade, may call for a short period of reduced feature work, which we plan openly with you.

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Discuss your Application Modernisation initiative

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