Agencies in need of application modernization, report finds

A recent MeriTalk report found that 92 percent of federal IT managers say that it is urgent for their agency to modernize legacy applications.

The report, called Future Ready Applications:  The Modern Legacy, was sponsored by Accenture Federal Services and sought to find out how agencies are dealing with application modernization.

Respondents cited security issues (42 percent), time required to manage and maintain systems (36 percent) and inflexibility and integration issues (31 percent) as being the driving factors behind agencies’ need to modernize their applications.

A little less than half (48 percent) of respondents answered that their legacy systems were capable of meeting mission needs at the moment, but there was less hope that the applications will be satisfactory in the future, with only 32 percent of respondents saying they see their legacy applications being satisfactory five years from now.

If agencies do not modernize, the fears are that they will succumb to security breaches (52 percent), performance issues (47 percent) and increased downtime and service disruptions (47 percent).

Fifty-three percent of respondents said their agency has a modernization strategy, but a far smaller percentage of respondents said that their agency has developed a business case around renewing or replacing existing applications (28 percent).

As far as modernization methodology goes, respondents said their applications could be successfully modernized using solutions like re-platforming the existing applications (72 percent), leveraging architecture-driven modernization (69 percent) and remediating the existing application to extend its useful life (65 percent).

To download the full report, click here.