Take a look at three companies that have invested in continuous holistic modernization with remarkable success.
In my last two blogs, I explored what modernization really means, what it requires, and why it matters for innovations like AI. We then went through an effective modernization approach based on Forrester’s Application Modernization Checklist.
So what does a successful upgrade look like in the real world? Let’s take a look at three companies that have invested in continuous holistic modernization with remarkable success. You’ll see how these organizations have not only implemented the guidelines from Forrester’s Application Modernization Checklist in the short term, but also how they plan to continue to implement these guidelines. ongoing modernization.
Sapiens reduces downtime while increasing agility
Sapiens, an insurtech company serving more than 600 insurers in 30 countries, faced a familiar challenge. Their legacy applications became a barrier to scaling because all of their management, security, and monitoring groups were in place before they moved to the cloud. To solve this, Sapiens knew they had to embark on a holistic modernization project that brought together strategy, process and technology to support their current needs and future ambitions.
Forrester Checklist No. 1: Strategy. Although their goal was straightforward, it was not simple. “Our main goal early on was to be up-to-date with our technology stack,” said Michael Mirel, head of cloud and DevOps Center of Excellence. “In the beginning it was IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). We quickly realized that microservices are where we need to be in terms of products.”
After defining their goal, Sapiens laid out a plan to incorporate artificial intelligence into their workflows. Log Analytics in Azure Monitor allowed them to assess the availability of their services (for example, by measuring the number of service calls). From there, Azure Monitor Application Insights helped them better understand how their applications were behaving and alert them to any anomalies, an approach that wouldn’t have been possible with just their on-premises systems.
Forrester Checklist No. 2: Process. Sapiens has established a cloud center of excellence and a dedicated team to help modernize its entire organization. The command center helped them drive their modernization journey and infused transformative thinking into their day-to-day operations.
Forrester Checklist No. 3: Technology. Sapiens started with traditional IaaS virtual machine consumption. Modernization has moved into the role of a large consumer of Azure Kubernetes with direct access to the Microsoft product team. And adopting Azure Arc combined their patching and monitoring dashboards and security management tools into a single pane of glass.
As the insurance industry is a highly regulated sector, Sapiens was also looking for a strategic partner that would put modern security at the forefront of its offering. They decided that Microsoft Security was the best fit for ensuring cloud security and compliance with global regulations. Microsoft product teams also offered targeted support for continuous improvement of Sapiens products together with their own developers.
Continuous modernization. The Sapiens have achieved their original goals – but they’re still not done. After migrating customers from data centers to the cloud, they began a long-term modernization project led by their Cloud Center of Excellence. Mirel explains why. “We want to break down walls and give our users more self-service and, as a result, better service for our customers,” he says. “If I’m an end user, developer, tester or product manager, I should be able to create another test environment and release it overnight instead of depending on DevOps or IT and having to wait days.”
Overall, Sapiens’ thoughtful modernization approach helped reduce downtime, increase agility, future-proof the organization, and provide better service to both their engineers and customers. “We deal with the largest insurance companies in the world, which take our software as a service, but we also need to work with the existing ecosystems of these companies,” says Mirel. “With Azure Private Link, we can connect cloud to cloud with a single click, reducing deployment efforts by 50 percent.”
Coles is AI-ready and improves the customer experience
Australia’s leading retailer Coles has struggled with the changing demands of its customers. Noticing that shoppers are expected to seamlessly switch between channels (brick and mortar stores, their mobile apps and websites), Coles wanted to enhance this physical-digital experience with a modernisation.
Forrester Checklist No. 1: Strategy. To create a seamless shopping experience, Coles first needed to create a seamless development experience. Their teams had to be able to make continuous and nimble app updates to keep up with changing customer preferences. To that end, Coles outlined a strategy that kept engineers informed of what they were trying to achieve and why, so they could make decisions that aligned with their shared goal. After starting their journey, Coles regularly reviewed their progress using insights from customer data to ensure their work was effective.
Forrester Checklist No. 2: Process. Coles also took a hard look at their processes. Azure DevOps helped streamline workflows by enabling rapid integration of changes for new features in pipeline applications. They then started tracking (and continue to track) their progress by measuring build time and other KPIs. Anton Vishnyakov, Chief Engineer and Platform Engineering Manager, saw the difference. “Instead of publishing six-weekly editions, we now publish weekly editions. And the build time now takes about 10 to 15 minutes, compared to what used to be several hours.”
Forrester Checklist No. 3: Technology. To modernize its technology, Coles first identified Microsoft as a strategic innovation partner. They knew that Microsoft’s highly collaborative engineering process was conducive to continuous innovation, and Microsoft Azure could help update their stacks to limit technology proliferation. Azure enabled faster deployment while providing a safer and more secure web environment for customers.
More specifically, solutions including Azure Cosmos DB and Azure Kubernetes Service have helped Coles gain customer insights across channels and further improve their operations. When they were ready to turn these insights into meaningful product updates, they could test them using Azure App Service before launch. At all times, Azure API Management runs in the background, helping Coles keep security at the forefront of every stage of the process.
Continuous modernization: Since going on the road, Coles has only deepened its relationship with Microsoft. Microsoft teams and offerings help them continuously improve their operations, leading to higher return on investment in Azure services and a seamless and well-organized customer experience across channels.
Thanks to their thoughtful modernization approach, Coles is now AI-ready and already uses analytics and AI to predict inventory distribution, optimize workforce scheduling and more. Coles engineers are also able to quickly integrate new product updates to solve problems and add new features, an advantage not lost on Patrik Mihailescu, Senior Engineering Manager, Web. “Over the next six to nine months, we’re going to move to daily deployments, and certainly with Azure tools, that’s going to be super key to being able to go even faster.” They can also safely make these changes by independently testing them using Azure App Service before deployment, which helps maintain security and compliance.
Credit Europe Bank NV improves security and streamlines the development process
Credit Europe Bank NV faced a wider challenge of modernizing their rapidly aging local infrastructure. Although the bank serves nearly a million customers worldwide, their IT teams were often waiting for hardware deliveries and constantly managing local complexities. It was time for a new approach.
Forrester Checklist No. 1: Strategy. Credit Europe Bank NV recognized the need for a holistic modernization and outlined a plan to completely transform their infrastructure, starting with replacing their on-premises systems with the cloud. The cloud would simplify tasks for their IT team and enable scalability, as teams would no longer have to wait for hardware or spend time configuring complex legacy systems. They then turned to their workforce. Modernization represented a big learning curve for the bank’s IT teams, so they developed a plan to upskill employees on cloud concepts.
Forrester Checklist No. 2: Process. Credit Europe Bank NV also needed to redesign its processes and measure success. During the upgrade, they paid close attention to the time it took for customers to board and eventually found themselves cutting it from three days to nine minutes. “We now offer a modern and engaging digital banking platform,” says Ulaş Ergin, IT, Digital Banking and Software Architecture Manager. “Everything has been redesigned for fluidity and speed, making the entire banking experience more enjoyable.”
Forrester Checklist No. 3: Technology. When launching its technology transformation, Credit Europe Bank NV focused on security from the start and chose the Microsoft Azure cloud. As a security and compliance leader with integrated tools for financial services, Azure could help them manage their sensitive data in compliance with industry regulations. They then tackled their legacy infrastructure with Azure Kubernetes Service, a managed container orchestration platform. AKS helped simplify their operations and accelerate development, resulting in smoother resource management and a more efficient environment setup process.
Continuous modernization. Credit Europe Bank NV continues to explore new opportunities in the cloud. They use Azure Cognitive Services to improve the secure processing of customer ID photos and are constantly releasing new features and products. Next, they turn their attention to GitHub Copilot to transform their internal banking system.
Now, Credit Europe Bank NV’s security is stronger than ever, as the migration to the cloud has enabled them to accept digital, mobile software tokens and biometric authentication. They have also improved their customer experience and even introduced new services such as real-time forex trading, which would not have been possible on their old system. “The feedback from customers has been overwhelmingly positive,” says Berkay Çavuşoğlu, Program Manager. “Our business customers have noticed that system performance is faster.”
The bank also accelerated its development cycle by simplifying the system setup process and management using Azure. Azure handles many local tasks behind the scenes, such as upgrades and security patches, so developers can focus on more strategic tasks. “We no longer need to manage the underlying infrastructure, which has significantly reduced the operational burden,” says Teoman Sevinç, a DevOps specialist. “In the past, if we wanted to make updates to our environment, it would break our non-production setup. But with Azure, management and setting up the environment is rationalized, which positively affects our development life cycle.”
Are you ready to start your modernization journey?
That wraps up our application modernization blog series – but just as modernization is never done, there’s always something to learn. If you missed them, go back to my earlier blogs in the series the basics of modernization and details on an effective approach to modernization.
Also, be sure to read the seminal texts that led to our work: Forrester Consulting’s Application Modernization Checklist commissioned by Microsoft and Forrester Consulting’s Unlock Competitive Advantage with Application Modernization study. You can also check out the following resources: