APIs are widely used to address challenges with legacy infrastructure.Teams are finding success with more modular approaches, refactoring order systems to work with modern applications and integrations, and in some cases doing away with legacy infrastructure altogether. APIs are helping enterprises deal with technical debt and future-proof operations against further technology debt. They do that by ensuring that systems are smaller, more modular, and capable of evolving and deprecating without the overhead associated with legacy systems.
- Monolith - Teams are using APIs to decouple and redefine monolithic legacy systems, reverse-engineering and implementing microservices and APIs to modernize legacy systems. They are breaking business down into more manageable components that can evolve.
- Microservices - Modular, single-use, synchronous and asynchronous microservices are redefining legacy systems, allowing them to become more distributed with components that are easier to evolve and reuse.
- Facades - APIs create facades that provide modern interfaces for applications, working to evolve or deprecate infrastructure. That allows technical debt to be abstracted away so it can be sustained or deprecated.
- Gateways - Gateways provide an industrial-grade approach foro standing up a modernized stack in front of legacy systems. They provide a single modernized entry point for all API infrastructure without exposing back-end systems.
- Proxy - Proxies intercept and map out the traffic in legacy applications. Proxies, APM, and other solutions can map out exactly what legacy systems do, applying the information to define and deliver facades and microservices.
- Deprecation - There may come a time when legacy systems can be deprecated, relying on proxies, gateways, facades, and microservices to chip away at how systems are used in applications and modernize enterprise infrastructure.
- Sustainment - While not desirable, there are many situations where legacy systems may not be able to be deprecated for some time. Organizations must undertake an honest assessment of how gateways and other approaches can be used to sustain legacy infrastructure.
APIs are essential for modernizing legacy infrastructure, providing interfaces that can be used in applications, while abstracting away legacy solutions undergoing modernization. APIs can help modernize existing infrastructure without disrupting applications and integrations dependent on the digital resources and capabilities delivered by legacy solutions. Ideally, the modernization of your legacy systems will not be a separate project from your regular operations. Early in your API-first transformation, you may have to dedicate resources to mapping out and redefining your legacy infrastructure landscape. But as you move forward, this task should become part of every team’s regular work, and everyone should be addressing legacy technical debt along with the new.