Comparative analysis of case studies on legacy system migration in banking industry

Abstract

Advances in technology, changing customer requirements, and pressure from business goals are the main drivers for innovation in the banking industry. Legacy architectures with monolithic structures prevent banks from implementing new generation banking models. To stay competitive, banks migrate to modular and scalable architectures. This migration has a significant impact on banks’ technical and organizational infrastructures, so it is crucial to devise an end-to-end migration strategy and plan the transformation. This thesis reports our observations on the legacy system migration of three large retail banks between 2014 and 2020, focusing on the evaluation and prioritization criteria for their application portfolio to be migrated. We compare and contrast the motivations, migration strategies, and migration prioritization methods and discuss key takeaways from these high scale migration projects. The existing legacy architecture, most urging issues of the current operations and industry trends at the time of the transformation program, define the target architecture for legacy migration. The culture and availability of strong governance structures such as architecture boards, solution architecture teams, and target architecture patterns play an essential role in how migration planning is conducted. Regardless of the planning approach selected, value-driven program management practice would provide the most optimized prioritization. A robust migration project management is required to ensure the continuity, progress, and quality of the transformation. As transformation programs migrate the applications to the new platform, migration evaluation and prioritization criteria are subject to change. Continuous alignment of these criteria with program objectives is essential to succeed in the application migration during legacy modernization programs.