Mallow Podcast: Application Modernisation

In the second episode of the Mallow podcast, founders Jaakko Karhumaa and Teemu Tapanila tackle a topic that has been on the IT industry's lips for a decade: application modernisation. While the term is familiar to many, its meaning varies depending on who you ask. According to Mallow's experts, modernisation is not just a technical exercise — it's a way to respond to changing business needs.

What does modernisation actually mean?

Modernisation is often a "fancier term" for maintaining and servicing an existing application. Jaakko and Teemu compare an application to a house: if a house goes without maintenance for ten years, it deteriorates. The same happens to an application running a company's critical operations without updates.

Modernisation can be broken down into levels, much like renovations:

• Light cosmetic refresh: Moving an application to the cloud as-is (lift-and-shift).
• Facade renovation: Making small changes to the application during cloud migration.
• Gut renovation or rebuild: Heavy modernisation or rebuilding the application from scratch.

Mallow's goal is to find the "smart move" between these — enabling something new without tearing the whole house down.

Azure and the benefits of cloud modernisation

When applications are moved to Microsoft Azure, the aim is to leverage cloud services intelligently so that the application lifecycle can evolve continuously.

One concrete example is the British bank Stewardship. Mallow delivered a cloud modernisation project where on-premise servers were migrated to Azure while simultaneously overhauling development practices. The result was striking: instead of 2–4 releases per year, the bank can now ship 300 updates annually. Modernisation removed the fear from release pipelines and turned them into routine notifications of new features.

Business first, technology second

Modernisation is 90 percent processes and people, and only 10 percent technology. The key is finding the business case for change. If you tell a managing director about a .NET version upgrade, they may not get excited. But if you tell them that spinning up a new client environment goes from eight weeks to one, the conversation changes immediately.

Leveraging AI is one of today's biggest drivers. Modernisation is often a prerequisite for using AI effectively — whether in application development or in the end product itself. For example, Aidon modernised its operations by shifting from selling applications to selling data and services (SaaS), which transformed their entire business model.

Security and governance

Moving to the cloud provides ready-made patterns for identity management and security. Teemu notes that with AI, access control becomes even more critical. Where information was previously safe "behind complexity", AI can now find it easily if permissions are not in order — for example, by directly querying the CEO's calendar entries.

How to get started

A modernisation initiative should begin by listing existing applications and identifying those that need attention — whether due to technical risk or new business opportunity.

Mallow's experts emphasise that there is no one-size-fits-all model. However, experience from hundreds of projects helps prioritise and avoid common pitfalls.

Want to discuss the state of your applications? Modernisation is an ongoing conversation, and Mallow is ready to help find the optimal solution.