Yesterday, we released The Forrester Wave™: Application Modernization And Migration Services, Q3 2021. We looked at the 14 most significant vendors — Accenture, Atos, Capgemini, Cognizant, Deloitte, EPAM, EY, HCL Technologies, IBM, Infosys, Larsen & Toubro Infotech (LTI), NTT DATA, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), and Wipro — in the market and evaluated them across 26 criteria. In the 2021 market for application modernization and migration services, we’re witnessing a continuing shift toward modernization enabled by advanced cloud-native technologies, with a correspondingly lower emphasis on infrastructure-led lift-and-shift migration. At the same time, the hyperscale cloud providers themselves have become central to customers’ migration and modernization journeys, not only by becoming important strategic partners for large enterprise customers but also by participating in dedicated go-to-market units that the large systems integrators are forming. The market is also characterized by higher degrees of automation, including the growing importance of service delivery accelerators, quality enablers, and vertical-industry-specific assets.

There are six Leaders in today’s market: Accenture, Infosys, IBM, TCS, Deloitte, and HCL Technologies. We found that these Leaders differentiate themselves by having the ability to:

  • Offer significant breadth of capability. Providers must possess significant breadth of capability, encompassing the full range of migration and modernization services, from strategy and advisory services to migration and modernization execution.
  • Embrace a differentiating vision for application modernization and migration. Each provider should manifest its vision for application migration and modernization services by an opinionated point of view coupled with a flexible commercial model that enables enterprise customers to fund their migration and modernization journeys with incremental value.
  • Demonstrate an ongoing commitment to this market. Each provider’s commitment to the migration and modernization services market must be unwavering, with continuing enhancements and expansions of service capabilities, including investments in service delivery assets and inorganic growth where warranted.

Other suppliers, including Hexaware, PwC, Slalom, Thoughtworks, and Virtusa, are also strong choices for app migration and modernization services but did not qualify or did not choose to participate in our evaluation.

With the importance of business agility ever increasing, now is the time to consider obtaining the assistance of application migration and modernization service providers to accelerate your cloud journey. If you want to benchmark your current suppliers against the current industry-leading suppliers, or are looking for a new partner, this Forrester Wave is the best starting point.

If you would like to learn more about this space, I recommend the following resources: