6 Reasons You Should Keep Your Legacy Systems
posted by Anna Mar, January 06, 2012It's a fundamental law of the technology universe — all systems need to be replaced with time. However, just because a system is legacy doesn't mandate that it be replaced immediately. The frequency at which you replace legacy systems impacts your IT and business efficiency.
Replacing a legacy system can be expensive and high risk. Legacy replacement projects should only be undertaken after careful consideration and planning. There are 6 good reasons to keep your legacy systems:
1. Recognize Your Competitive Advantage
Your legacy system may represent a competitive advantage — retiring it may hurt your business.If you've built a customized solution that's highly adapted to your organization, competitive environment and industry — switching to a generic packaged solution may actually decrease your competitive advantage.
2. Modernization is Often a Better Choice
It's often cheaper and lower risk to continually improve your existing system rather than pursue a big-bang style replacement.3. Replacement is Painful
Large scale legacy replacement projects (often) have a high risk of project failure.4. Users Don't Like Change
People don't like change. When you replace legacy systems — don't underestimate resistance. Replacing a legacy system asks a lot of impacted business units and users:Project support (requirements, testing, etc).
Process changes (changes people's jobs).
Possible hiccups in the new system may cause downtime or require workarounds.
Even a successful legacy replacement project can be highly unpopular.
5. Options are Available
When your legacy system has reached end of support it's often possible to negotiate a special support agreement. In other cases, it's possible to purchase the source code from your vendor.6. Take Advantage of the Future
The longer you wait to replace your legacy systems — the more modern your next system will be.Let's say you have a system from the 1970s. If you replaced it in 1995 — you might have chosen a technology based on CORBA that has fallen out of general use. If you replaced it today you'd have better technology choices.
|
Explaining complex business and technical concepts in layman's terms. |
|
Current state blueprints capture business, data and implementation architecture at the conceptual, logical and physical levels. |
|
Scoring the EA team on influence. |
Recently on Simplicable
| What Enterprise Feedback Management Really Meansposted by Anna MarIndustrial strength survey tools. |
|
| Cloud Guideposted by John SpaceyA guide to cloud computing including cheat sheets, best practices and metrics. |
| Web Security: Battleships and Locustsposted by Anna MarThere are two types of web security threats: battleships and locusts. |
