text: **2.1.4 Application modernization journey for a cloud-centric business**
  **transformation**
  
  The journey to the cloud starts with application modernization. On average, only 20% of 
  applications in an environment were moved to the cloud. Application modernization is a 
  strategy for helping companies to move aging application estates to the cloud. 
  
  Business pressures demand faster time to market, robust workload mobility to allow quick 
  migrations to the cloud, which improves operational efficiency, elasticity, and cost reductions. 
  Applications must be adapted and ported to the cloud. Cloud-native technologies, such as 
  containers, Kubernetes, and microservices, simplify this journey. How much time do you need 
  to rewrite the entire portfolio of applications? Of course, it is a lot; therefore, a gradual 
  application modernization is inevitable. 
  
  Modernizing your applications results in the following immediate benefits: 
  
  (cid:2) Accelerate digital transformation. New applications quickly match the business 
  requirements. 
  
  (cid:2) Improve developer productivity. Application containerization enables self-service for 
  developers. 
  
  (cid:2) Improve operational efficiency and standardization. CI/CD practices of continuous 
  integration and continuous delivery to take advantage of the DevOps enablement culture. 
  
  An application modernization aligns with the hybrid nature of cloud adoption by large 
  enterprises. It fully supports multicloud deployments that can span private, on-premises 
  clouds and various public clouds by using standard Kubernetes-based container 
  orchestration platforms, such as Red Hat OpenShift. For more information, see 2.5, 
  “Enterprise Kubernetes: Red Hat OpenShift” on page 31. 