Your spaghetti code is past its expiration date. What to do when you needed to modernize yesterday.

As far as your users are concerned, the systems they’ve been using for the past 5 years work just fine. The IT department has managed to smooth over all the rough spots from your last acquisition/integration, and everyone knows how to handle the current bugs. But your vendor is about to end-of-life your HR application, and the tangled, prehistoric pile of Java code hiding behind every UI is growing bigger by the minute.

Just maintaining the “spaghetti factory” for 350 users and 150 different applications has become far too expensive. In fact, in a recent McKinsey study, CIOs estimated that tech debt comprises “20-40% of the value of their entire technology estate before depreciation.” More urgently, all the old, patched-together code has created persistent security gaps, and it’s started to hamper innovation. How can you be strategic when your most creative minds are wasting time patching holes in Java code?

What’s the right approach?

Modernization is no longer an option, it’s now your top priority, but it’s a massive project. And no one is more aware of the current developer shortage than you. You’re out of time, out of resources, and you have no idea where to start. And before you can start, you have to choose an approach: rehosting, refactoring, rearchitecting, or going all-in on a cloud-native rebuild. The question is: which of these will keep HR up and running and get everything else on track, on time, without killing your budget?

Let’s do a quick analysis of each:

1. Rehosting (“Lift and Shift”)

• Pluses: It’s fast and cost-effective, requiring the least expertise and minimal changes to the code. It allows you to migrate legacy systems to the cloud without disruptions.
• Minuses: It doesn’t enable you to leverage cloud-native capabilities; all technical debt and inefficiencies remain, seriously limiting long-term cost-savings, scalability and flexibility.

2. Refactoring

• Pluses: This approach involves modifying the code to improve performance, optimizing it for the cloud without changing the core architecture.
• Minuses: It’s time-consuming and requires skilled developers; some legacy limitations may persist.

3. Rearchitecting

• Pluses: This approach transforms the architecture (e.g., to microservices) for improved scalability, performance, and cloud-native benefits.
• Minuses: It’s more complex and resource-intensive to do; it requires a longer timeline and carries a higher risk of disrupting business operations.

3. Rebuilding (Cloud-Native)

• Pluses: This approach provides maximum flexibility, future-readiness, and full cloud-native benefits, including on-demand scalability and advanced technologies (e.g., containers, serverless).
• Minuses: It’s perceived as the highest cost and takes the longest time; rebuilding from scratch demands extensive resources and can be disruptive in the short term.

Getting it done right, on time.

This time, you want to do it right. You want to rebuild; it’s the best way to leave a legacy you want to be remembered for. But how do you get there from here? High-productivity, Java modernization tools are a great place to start. Using low-code Java modernization tools such as Rappit Developer, developers can work side-by-side with business users to dramatically reduce the time it takes to build, modify, and deploy custom enterprise applications at scale. Rappit Developer streamlines the development process with instant prototyping, code generation, and built-in optimization for cloud-native deployments.

Rappit Developer also generates clean, best practices-based Java code that is optimized for the cloud and can be extensively tailored outside the tool. This allows you to develop fully customized, cloud-native enterprise Java apps 4x faster than traditional methods, at as little as 25% of the cost – with no vendor lock-in.

Leaving a legacy of business agility

The benefits of rebuilding with Rappit Developer go way beyond the immediate time and cost savings. By generating code based on modern technologies, solutions built using Rappit Developer will never leave a legacy of tech debt; rather, they will stay forever young and agile, enabling businesses to respond quickly and adapt to changes in markets, customer demand, and the world at large. Just in time, it looks like you’ll be able to save your enterprise from the terrible spaghetti monster after all.

With over 45 years of experience building enterprise applications, and over 15 years of buildings for the Google Cloud, Rappit will put you on the happy path to modernization.

Learn how to start your modernization journey, the Rappit way.