Recently, Perficient and Red Hat presented a great discussion surrounding middleware and the importance of modernization. The discussion was led by Perficient’s Red Hat Practice Director Charles Mahoney, and three experts from Red Hat: Chief Architect and Strategist, E.G. Nadhan; Director of Business Development and Hybrid Cloud, Jason Milliron; and Senior Manager of Application Development Solution Architects, Ron Murhammer.
Key Takeaways
What is modernization?
A well-kept secret about modernization is that it is about transitioning from legacy applications to a more resilient and proactive system. It is also not a one-and-done solution, it is a journey and requires a holistic approach to make sure the whole IT enterprise is modernized. With technology always evolving, modernization is never complete. There will always be new things to address. Ultimately, what modernization comes down to is three things: 1) decreasing costs, 2) growing revenue, and 3) increasing agility.
A good analogy is when you are remodeling your house, it’s not just about painting the walls and changing the countertops. It’s really about starting with the foundation and ensuring that everything is at the standard that it should be today. Similarly, modernization is not just moving everything to the cloud. The cloud is certainly a part of modernization, but without modernizing everything else, you are just moving your problems to the cloud.
What is middleware?
Middleware is software that allows companies to do things such as run applications, integrate applications with other systems, and automate human workflows. It is basically the plumbing behind everything that makes your software run, allowing developers to focus on developing instead of worrying about transactions or their applications going down. Another way to think about middleware is as the connective tissue for data, applications, and processes. When you put middleware into the context of the fundamental nature of computers and data processing, it is middleware’s job to make sure data is delivered to the right place at the right time.
Middleware is oftentimes forgotten because it is the framework to help solve the underlying functionalities that you need to create applications and services. When you have good middleware, you tend not to think about it because it allows developers to focus on their jobs.
What are some legacy middleware challenges?
Legacy middleware that was designed 10-20 years ago presents many challenges when it comes to moving to the cloud and being more agile. These platforms were built on-prem, and were not designed to quickly scale up and down with business needs. Data has become more important in recent years with the amount of data that is being processed now. There has also been a push to be more API-focused and driven. In addition to that, the cloud has developed a stronger focus. These changes make legacy middleware expensive to maintain, and oftentimes expensive to migrate to or integrate with cloud technologies.
How should companies modernize?
Companies should first determine their integration strategy, options, and overall architecture, then make sure their integration mechanisms are built to work in the future as their business changes. They also need to take a hard look at what technologies and middleware their applications and services are built on, specifically the landscape of the applications that are core to their business and focus on the middleware technologies those are built on to make sure they aren’t holding their business back.
Catch the discussion here, or watch it below to learn more about middleware and the importance of modernization.
Why Perficient and Red Hat
Perficient’s middleware and application modernization expertise earned us the Red Hat 2020 Application Platform Success Partner of the Year and 2018 Rising Star Partner of the Year.
As a Red Hat Premier Partner and a Red Hat Apex Partner, we offer a modern approach to deliver application modernization as well as cloud implementations and migrations.
Red Hat provides open-source technologies that enable strategic cloud-native development, DevOps, and enterprise integration solutions to make it easier for enterprises to work across platforms and environments.
