INTELLIGENT SOFTWARE BUSINESS
The challenges of managing legacy
and digital applications at the same
time can be overcome by using
integration middleware, elaborates
Erica Langhi at Red Hat.
Using middleware to unravel
corporate spaghetti
T
oday, organisations are acutely
aware of the need to become more
digital in order to stay competitive
and serve customers in new ways. We
have entered an era of agile development
practices, hybrid technology footprints
and a resulting API economy. This all
holds great promise, but as an upshot
IT teams are coming under increasing
pressure to deliver and manage complex
environments, especially when it comes to
connecting data, applications and devices.
The discussion around addressing this
challenge is wide-ranging and lively. But I
would argue that there is a critical piece of
the puzzle that is yet to take centre stage.
46
Spaghetti junction
In practical terms, being more digital
often translates into being able to
create new applications faster. Indeed,
maintaining and updating existing
applications is a top IT priority for many
organisations – 71%, according to data
from our customers – as is creating new
applications more quickly, 53%.
This is where we see many
organisations uncover an integration
problem, which amounts to a spaghetti-
like tangle of siloed systems and data
sources that have built up over time. It
can be hard to know where to start with
untangling the plethora of disparate
systems and data sources when looking to
develop new applications that must plug
into them.
What is more, many legacy apps were
not made for the cloud and redesigning
them is far from cost efficient. Cue the
opportunity for new applications to be
created cloud-ready and easily integratable
with existing systems and applications.
In addition, many businesses are looking
to develop new applications using
microservices and containers.
36% of respondents to the above-
mentioned survey were in the process
of researching or planning to deploy
microservices architectures in the next
Issue 16
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS