Continuous Modernization

Continuous Modernization Solution

Continuous Modernization (CM) is a complementary approach to your DevOps practices of Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Development (CD).

CM gives you the ability to systematically and incrementally apply new software updates to your in-house applications, APIs, or any other software components. CM naturally fits into your DevOps processes.

Benefits of adopting a continuous modernization solution:

Reduce technical debt and minimize business risk incurred by staying on aging technology
Avoid business disruptions caused by the aging technology
Prevent massive modernization initiatives
Stay current on the latest 3rd-party software and reap the benefits from critical software improvements in important areas such as security and performance
Provide a systematic and uniform approach to software upgrades
Align with DevOps practices
Stay focused on your business’s strategic initiatives

Why Continuous Modernization

As your proprietary applications are released into production and transition from greenfield development to maintenance, small gaps in currency begin to creep in. Very quickly, maintenance hits a tipping point and your application becomes a liability.

Now you must divert resources away from delivering new features and functions to dealing with the mundane upgrade challenges that offer little to no perceived value to the business.

What started as a small gap in your software application—staying on an older version of a database driver, SDK, or 3rd-party framework—has now become a large and expensive modernization initiative.

But you can avoid all of this with Continuous Modernization (CM).

How Our Continuous Modernization Solution Works

Synchrony’s Modernization Lifecycle Platform (MLP) brings a uniform upgrade process, a collaborative work environment, and transparent and traceable perspectives to software upgrades.

While every environment is different, the continuous modernization process works uniformly, regardless of the underlying technology being upgraded.

1. Using MLP, a CM pipeline will be configured for your internal IT applications and integrated directly to your standard CI/CD pipeline. The CM pipeline will run in a parallel track, pulling your source code from a master branch of your source control management into an upgrade branch within MLP.

2. As new releases of 3rd-party or open source software become available, they will be pulled into the upgrade branch in MLP.

3. Run the upgrade pipeline from MLP, which pulls the latest application source code and upgrades it to include new versions of the 3rd-party and/or open-source software. Depending on the configuration of MLP, the upgrades can be automatically applied to the application code or be set to pause for review after an initial impact analysis. Because the upgrade path is isolated and contained within the upgrade branch of MLP, this process poses no risk to the source code in your master branch.

4. Upon completion of the upgrade process, run the CI/CD pipeline to regression-test the upgrade branch. Provide feedback by entering tickets into MLP associated with faulty upgrade or undesirable results.

5. Receive timely fixes from MLP and return to step 3 to repeat the modernization process.

6. Upon successful completion of a regression test, merge the MLP upgrade branch with your development master branch.

7. Steps 2-6 will repeat for any new releases of 3rd-party and/or open source software for a continuous modernization of your in-house applications.

At every stage of the CM workflow, alerts can be configured from within MLP to notify teams to review the impact analysis metrics of a new upgrade, as well as the results of the upgrade, before merging it back into the main development branch. Complete upgrade details are available, including upgrade rules executed during the last run and the preview of the before/after source code.

Since the upgrade rules are completely customizable, the modernization process can be rerun many times until it produces the desired result.

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