Your company might have a good deal of legacy applications to consider what to do with when its time to modernize, which raises the question of which ones you will save and port over to the new system. Having a comprehensive virtualization plan can help with this, as a piece by Kevin Casey in Dell's Tech Page One recently touched upon.
One of the key issues pertains to how stable the older applications are and whether they are worth developing in the future context. Determining whether or not this is the case means looking at the way the older apps operate and seeing if they are too buggy or costing you overall productivity.
However, just because an application is old doesn't mean you have to leave it behind. It's more about taking the opportunity of the conversion to think about the future of the legacy applications you use. For example, switching from desktop terminal emulators to a Flynet Viewer solution that runs on any device can let you keep existing applications without losing the flexibility needed in today's BYOD environment.
One of the sources quoted in this piece is a blog post on OpenLegacy written by Perry Nalevka. In his own list of tips for better application modernization, Nalevka recommends a careful study of each of the applications in question.
"Before modernizing a component ask yourself if upgrading will truly increase its value, especially in terms of the amount of effort needed to modernize," he said. "You may even want to prioritize segments according to value gained and only modernize the parts that will provide the greatest impact."
Check each legacy application to be as thorough as possible and make sure there aren't any gaps in your plan to keep your systems up to date. When it is time to make the conversion, you will have a simplified workload that will present less of a headache later on.