Intelligent Tech Channels Issue 16 | Page 46

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