How to Modernise Your Information System

In order to accelerate the transformations under way in the organisation, the IT department must now modernise its information system, in other words continuously update the software, infrastructure and hardware considered obsolete (also called inherited systems, or legacy systems).

These ageing systems are one of the main obstacles to digital transformation because they are expensive to maintain and communicate poorly with more modern software, thereby creating data silos, wasted time day to day and security risks.

In fact, 72% of IT departments believe that legacy limits their ability to implement their digital projects, according to a recent Couchbase survey. Modernising the IS is therefore a key issue in accelerating digital transformation. IT departments have clearly grasped this, since half of them had already decided to prioritise spending on solutions in the Cloud in 2021¹.

Of course, any modernisation project calls for a certain methodology. What are the key steps to follow to modernise your IS? And how can IS urbanisation help you in this process? Here are the answers!

Modernising the Information System, Step by Step

According to Gartner, an information system modernisation project can be carried out in 3 steps:

• Step 1/3: Assess existing applications against 6 criteria:
  • their ability to meet the needs of the organisation,
  • the value they generate,
  • their agility,
  • the cost,
  • their level of complexity,
  • and the associated risks.

If some applications fail to meet your criteria on several of these indicators, then it is high time to modernise them!

• Step 2/3: Research the various modernisation approaches available. Gartner puts forward 7 models to choose from, from the simplest to the most complex:

1. Adopt a microservices infrastructure to make better use of applications
2. Rehost the applications on another infrastructure (physical, virtual or cloud)
3. Migrate the applications to another runtime environment in the cloud
4. Refactor the applications
5. Re-architect applications requiring significant code changes
6. Recode the applications from scratch
7. Replace the applications with other applications better suited to your needs

• Step 3/3: Choose and deploy the most appropriate modernisation approach

To modernise its information system, Johnny Cervantes, IT department at WeLink (an IT services company specialising in supporting IT projects), chose for example to “migrate to a hybrid cloud infrastructure”, in other words a cloud environment combining a local infrastructure, a public cloud and a private cloud. More flexible than a private solution, the hybrid cloud makes it easier to access company data and applications remotely, and strengthens the security of the infrastructure.

Information System Urbanisation, a Key Lever for Modernisation

Your modernisation project can also go hand in hand with an urbanisation of the information system. This approach aims to structure the information system into communicating functional blocks, in order to

• simplify it,
• improve its performance,
• and make it more agile.

Read also: 5 rules for urbanising your IS

IS Urbanisation, According to IT Departments

At Doctolib, this urbanisation is a real day-to-day challenge. “We currently use more than 200 SaaS applications internally. The challenge is to ensure their scalability, that is to say to make sure that we do not use several different applications several times over for the same purpose, that these applications follow common urbanisation rules, and that the various business processes between the applications are as automated as possible. With the aim of improving their operational performance”, says Sébastien Louyot, Directeur IT Services.

This approach is not specific to companies, moreover. As Lionel Babin, Directeur des Systèmes d’Information et du Numérique at the charity Les Petits Frères des Pauvres, explains, IS urbanisation of course also concerns non-profit organisations:

“About ten years ago, non-profits were run in a fairly informal way. Today, they have become far more professional, which requires structuring the information system as a company would. Since the creation of the IT department within the Petits Frères des Pauvres, we have moved from a way of working where each department managed its own projects to centralised management of the projects of every department.

Several projects have been carried out to structure our IS. We have put in place an HRIS and an e-learning platform for employees and volunteers, we have redesigned our intranet, and we have centralised the management of identities and authentication for employees and volunteers through an IAM (Identity and Access Management) solution, in order to manage arrivals and departures more easily.”

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In the age of hybrid work, modernising the information system is far from being the only challenge facing IT departments. They also have to deploy new digital tools, invest in the working environment, secure mobile workstations, and much more.

Would you like to know more about the challenges that hybrid work poses for IT departments? Read the full white paper:

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This article is taken from our white paper “Hybrid work: the IT department facing new challenges”. In it you will discover: the 3 major challenges facing IT departments in the age of hybrid work; practical advice for accelerating your digital transformation, securing your workstations and improving the employee experience, as well as accounts from 10 IT departments working in companies, public bodies and non-profit organisations.

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¹ Dynabook study “The Hybrid Shift: Managing an increasingly remote workforce” (2021)