App Development And The Potential Challenges

Having a web or mobile app for the business is no more a special thing in today’s era. Long back, businesses had decided to go online and develop an app for themselves. And those first movers need legacy modernization services or app modernization today. Around two decades ago, the trending technologies were too different compared to today. And since the very beginning of the internet, trending technologies, as well as maintenance methodologies, are changing very rapidly. So, while using digital solutions/ apps, businesses need to pay heed to proper code maintenance. Maintenance is the key thing to focus on once the app is fully developed and deployed. If maintenance is not done properly, various serious troubles can arise, and it may lead to heavy business losses to the customer.

To understand the importance of app optimization, let's first overlook the process of app development.

App development is the end-to-end process in which the following stages are broadly involved.

- Requirement Analysis: In this phase, the app development company collects the requirements of the business

- Solution Design: Once the requirements are clear, the app development company proposes the best possible solution based on contemporary technology. Note that this solution can be suitable for a limited time span till the technology does not get outdated.

- Development Phase: Here the proposed solution is converted to reality and actual code writing takes place. Often, proper methodologies are not followed by the developers and only output-oriented code is written. There is a high chance that the developed code is not bug-free.

- Testing and deployment: To eliminate the bugs, this phase is important. A team of testers works hard so that the requirements are fulfilled, and the solution developed is bug-free.

Now just imagine, there are some bugs still remaining in the system that may arise after years. It will be a headache for the business to go to the development company and the concerned developer to fix the particular chunk of code. Hence, it is very important to write modular code, prepare documentation and improve code readability so that any developer can easily understand the code and make changes to it if any new requirement or problem arises.

App optimization services

This is the knowledge that we have today regarding code maintenance. But what if the solution is too old and these practices were not followed? Then comes the need for app optimization services. These companies help the business to fix the mistakes done by developers in the past and implement all best practices in code in order to optimize it. Such modernized code works for a longer time without any bugs and even if any bug arises, it can be easily fixed since all the maintenance criteria is followed and the code is readable.

What is legacy software?

Sometimes, the technology used for the app becomes too outdated and the company which licenses the technology declares a permanent stop on its support and new releases. Generally, new releases and support documentation help the developers to maintain the code. But if such content is frozen or not getting created, then the businesses might get into big trouble while adding new features to their app or even using it for a long time. Since the software technology used for the app is very old and not updated, it is called legacy software.

Why is legacy modernization required?

Since the legacy software is not up to date with the latest developments in the programming world, it shows the following problems:

1. High Processing time

Computer Scientists always focus on reducing processing time. During the first decade of this millennium, people used to wait for 5 to 10 seconds to load a website and considered it very obvious. Less than 5 seconds of loading time was considered the best. But today, 5 seconds loading time is regarded as a lag. The world moved from seconds to milliseconds for internet speed and the same with processing speed. So if the business is still using software developed a decade ago, it becomes more and more difficult to achieve today’s processing standards. If legacy software is modernized, the processing time can be reduced drastically.

2. Long debugging process

Recently, there are so many tools that have evolved that automate the debugging process to some extent and try to reduce the efforts of developers. But those tools do not necessarily comply with the legacy software. In such cases, despite having the faster-debugging process available, the app development company has to follow the old school and long debugging process. To enable the business to use the latest debugging process, legacy software modernization is required.

3. Difficult to fix frequent errors

Legacy software might get crashed often due to a heavy load of processing and non-compatibility issues. There is only a permanent solution to such problems once the legacy app is modernized.

4. Difficult to implement advanced features

Nowadays each business wants to add some functionality which includes Machine Learning or Business Analytics, Data Analytics, etc. Whereas in legacy software there is no provision to include these popular technologies because when the legacy software was developed, there was no great demand for these technologies. Therefore it becomes difficult to implement advanced features in legacy software and legacy modernization can solve this problem.

With the increase in demand for software solutions, the scope for legacy modernization services and app optimization services is also increasing.