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It's possible that your legacy systems have been a major factor in your growth, but now they are reaching maturity. You'll probably ignore your legacy systems as you adopt new strategies and paths, such as mobile, analytics, cloud, AI, and IoT.
Don't stay in the "stall" or dilemma zone. It's now time to unlock your legacy systems and use the intelligence and data they contain in your digital transformation. This guide will show you how to do it so that you can meet your customers' demands, overcome business challenges, and redefine your company.
What Is A Legacy System?
A legacy system is an outdated infrastructure and applications. Legacy systems are housed in monolithic environments and tightly coupled hardware and software. These products are usually owned by the customer, managed, and supported. These systems may be functional, but they are expensive to maintain and require IT skills that are hard to find. They can also hinder your ability to innovate.
Systems become outdated over time as businesses are constantly evolving due to changes in the economy, new legislation, market conditions, and management. To adapt to these changes, IT systems are also constantly evolving. It is difficult for IT managers, who are responsible for the management of systems, to get a complete picture because updates and adaptations are implemented by many different people.
Legacy systems can be essential to an organization. It is no doubt one of the reasons that legacy systems are still used by many companies. In order to determine the value of maintaining legacy systems, IT managers need to identify them. Legacy systems are often critical to the day-to-day operation of a company, and their migration and replacement should be planned and assessed carefully to minimize any risks.
Legacy Systems Can Be Classified Into Several Types
The assessment of different aspects can help companies identify whether they are using an old system or application. It can become outdated for a variety of reasons. The vendor of the system may discontinue the product, which is known as EOL (End-of-Life Legacy System). It is no longer available and therefore has no support. The system can become outdated for other reasons, such as it has not been updated in a long time, it's heavily patched, or it cannot be scaled.
Why Do Legacy Systems Continue To Be Used?
The IT system lasts for many years, but technology is evolving at a rapid pace. This is why companies often find themselves with outdated systems before they are ready to replace them. It is common for companies to use legacy systems for many years. Some of the reasons why companies continue to use legacy systems include:
- These systems still serve a business purpose or are mission-critical systems.
- This is an old investment in technology that hasn't been recovered. Deploying an IT system is costly. In order to recover their investment, companies must use the IT systems for a set period.
- Companies cannot always invest the resources - money, staff, and time - required to replace a legacy system.
- The company does not have the IT expertise required to migrate its legacy system.
- Organizations lack the specifications necessary to create a system that has the same features as the legacy system. It is usually because systems are modified over time by many different people to meet the needs of the company.
- The organization doesn't want to replace it.
What Are The Major Risks And Issues Associated With Maintaining A Legacy System?
Should conduct periodic security and performance audits if legacy systems are important for an organization. There are many reasons for maintaining a legacy system. However, there are also many potential risks and issues that need to be considered.
- Compatibility: The legacy system may become incompatible due to its outdated technology. It is possible that departments using legacy systems will not be able to take advantage of all the new features available.
- Support: Support is important. If your vendor no longer sells the software or system that you use, nor does he offer support, he is unlikely to be able to help if a problem occurs.
- Data silos: Most legacy systems are not designed to integrate with newer systems, isolating the data from those systems.
- Safety: Lack of support, maintenance, or updates, along with the use of outdated security protocols and standards, can lead to patches that cause security breaches. It can also be difficult to meet regulatory compliance.
- Performance: Performance, efficiency, and productivity may also be affected by the slowing down of legacy systems over time.
- Maintenance Cost And Competitiveness: Maintaining an old system requires investing in IT resources that will eventually need to be replaced.
What Are The Most Difficult Aspects Of Replacing A Legacy System With A Newer One?
Replacement and migration of legacy systems are critical elements for organizations. It is difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to replace a legacy system. It is important to evaluate key aspects such as the condition of the legacy system, the business requirements, or the acceptable risks.
Costs
The costs to replace a legacy system are also high. To avoid a rocketing of costs, it is essential to assess and plan migration projects properly. The fact that some business processes have to be adapted in order to fix the flaws of the IT system can result in significant costs.
Specifications
The main risk of replacing an old system is that it does not meet your business requirements. It is usually due to a lack of technical specifications in the old system. It can cause errors or changes to the business rules specified in the software, which can lead the system to lose some important data. Creating a system with the same characteristics and functions as the legacy system is typically challenging. If the legacy system was built using an outdated programming language or technology, it might be difficult to find qualified professionals to lead the migration.
Data Protection
Data Protection is essential; all data should be migrated correctly to prevent data loss. Companies must ensure that all data can safely be extracted, and they should also test and review data to make sure it is compatible with the new format.
User Experience
User experiences are another challenge that is often ignored. All parties involved in the migration process should be actively engaged. Consider their feedback when deploying a new solution. Some legacy users may be reluctant to make a change.
Assessing all of these factors will allow companies to determine the best option for their business, whether it's replacing outdated software and systems with new ones, moving them to the cloud, or rebuilding the architecture or part of it.
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What Is Legacy Modernization?
The process of legacy modernization involves updating and optimizing existing business systems in order to improve operational efficiency, overcome technology constraints, satisfy customer expectations, and integrate with newer technologies.
When organizations are stuck between the need to maintain older, costly hardware that cannot be interoperable with newer technologies and the massive task of overhauling Infrastructure in order to benefit from a platform best suited to their business goals, they begin to implement legacy modernization. CIOs and other IT leaders are forced to weigh a number of factors in order to decide when to begin modernization. They also need to consider where modernization will have the greatest impact and how best to plan the project so as to minimize business disruptions.
The minimum goal for legacy system modernization should be to achieve system parity with operational improvements. Ideal performance, agility, and innovative leaps are the ideal goals. The spectrum of legacy modernization is wide. You can refactor the code with migration tools in order to run the system on a more modern infrastructure. Emulators are sometimes available to avoid any code changes. The alternative is to entirely redesign the system's architecture and swap out the existing legacy system for one that was created with cloud-native development tools.
Legacy Systems Modernization Strategies
The majority of legacy modernization can be approached either in a revolutionary way or an evolutionary one.
Modernization Revolutionized
Revolutionary Modernization is a radical transformation of Infrastructure. This approach is often required in mergers and purchases when one company must adapt quickly to the infrastructures of the newly acquired entity. A revolutionary approach can also be used when the legacy system is no longer a burden but a threat. When legacy systems no longer receive support from their vendors, organizations are left with security and compliance holes as well as no patches or updates. This method is fraught with risk, disruption, and increased costs.
Modernization Of The Evolution
The evolutionary method is usually chosen by organizations that are more risk-averse. The evolutionary approach to modernization is a long-term, multi-phased model that achieves the same goals as a revolutionary approach. The evolutionary approach involves modernizing each workload one at a time.
This approach spreads out costs and reduces disruptions to business. This approach is often used by organizations that are locked into vendor agreements to modernize the legacy system as they wait for their contracts to expire. Organizations can integrate on-premises and cloud resources through hybrid models to enable the progression of legacy transformation.
Six Factors To Consider When Choosing A Modernization Strategy For Legacy Systems
You should first evaluate your current operations in order to decide whether you want to adopt an evolutionary or revolutionary approach. This process should also include the following factors:
Workload
Assess applications and software for their business value and criticality and identify areas where modernization is possible. Workloads should be assessed holistically in light of the business's future direction.
Architecture
Assess infrastructure elements, performance, and ROI in order to determine where newer technology can provide better results.
Financial
Assess your spending to identify budget pressures and optimize resources for current operations.
Risk
Consider the impact of the project on the organization, including the potential disruption and the associated effects on processes and culture. Consider the risks of maintaining the legacy system, such as maintenance for systems that are out-of-support or have limited resources.
Costs
Modernization costs and timelines should be based on the new skill sets, processes, and training that are required.
The Security Of Your Own Home
Plan how to protect your systems before, during, and after the modernization process to prevent data loss, system outages, or exposure. The security plan should include a confirmation of compliance with government and industry regulations.
Benefits Of Legacy System Modernization
Modernization has the following additional benefits:
- Operational Efficiency: Modernized information systems provide better performance, faster time-to-market, and better customer experiences.
- Reduced Cost: Reducing software, hardware, and licensing costs by decommissioning monolithic applications, data centers, and physical servers.
- IT Agility: Modernized systems allow you to adapt quickly to changing business conditions, optimize processes and integrate systems across your organization. You can also leverage data to improve your systems.
Why Is It Necessary To Update Your Legacy System?
The following factors are important in determining the decision to modernize legacy systems:
- Cost: Old Infrastructure is more expensive to maintain than modernized Infrastructure
- Security: Unsupported legacy infrastructure can be vulnerable due to the lack of security patches or updates.
- Compliance: As regulatory controls and audits become stricter, legacy systems cannot keep up. This can lead to penalties or losing certification.
- Competitors: It's almost impossible to meet customer expectations and launch innovative products and services before your competitors without modernized applications. Modernized IT practices that support DevOps are essential to innovation, as they shorten the time between development and release.
- Productivity: Your employees' ability to communicate, collaborate, and work efficiently is hindered because they lack access to the latest tools.
Prepare For Legacy System Modernization
Modernization projects can be as simple as upgrading a backend system, or they could be as complex and impact the entire company. It's crucial to focus on three key areas when preparing for a legacy project.
Check Your Maturity
Assessing your maturity level is the first step to modernizing applications. If your organization is in an early maturity stage and has not yet undergone a migration of legacy systems, it's best to focus on the low-hanging fruits, such as multiple instances of the exact same application, applications that perform the same functions, or applications which are non-essential.
Plan Your Strategy
To determine the best areas for modernization, gather information about timelines, budgets, and business requirements. At this stage, the modernization process should include your data, compliance, and security teams, as well as the IT team.
Plan Ongoing Modernization Stages
Modernizing your applications should be a continuous process that affects all aspects of your business and IT processes. It is, by nature, a process that involves the maintenance of the most modern, efficient, and feature-rich Infrastructure. There will always be areas where improvements and adaptations can be made, given the speed of technological advancement.
Modernization Of Legacy Systems
Seven common approaches to modernizing legacy systems are available, and each has its own level of difficulty. Each approach also offers a different return on investment. Your organization can reduce costs while improving its agility by choosing the right option. The legacy modernization Rs include:
Replace
Replace all existing legacy components and decommission them completely. This approach involves the organization completely removing the old system and replacing it with a new one, which takes into account the new requirements, as well as the changed or optimized processes. Replace your legacy email system with the benefits of cloud-based Microsoft 365 or your own CRM system with Salesforce CRM.
SaaS can be an easier way to get into cloud solutions. However, it does require a lot of planning. IT dedicated teams need to determine how data will be migrated and then leveraged within the new system. They also have to account for any business disruption caused by user training or learning curves. Consider evaluating enterprise systems or platforms that are suitable for the business and hosting them in a cloud service environment.
Rebuild
Restructure and optimize legacy components for Legacy applications into a cloud-native environment. Full rebuilding is the most expensive and longest route but delivers the greatest cost benefits. This is the best option for most businesses. The other options are just steps on the way.
A full rebuild, as opposed to other methods which only partially leverage modernized architecture, rearchitects a legacy system into a modernized and cloud native environment. DevOps is implemented, and technologies such as containers, service meshes, and microservices are adopted. Combining technology and methodology allows for greater flexibility, improved performance, and lower operating costs in the long run.
Replatform
Replatforming is a method of porting an application to a different runtime platform, with minimal changes to the code and maintaining all features.
The code can be adapted to the new platform with minimal changes without affecting the system features or code structure. Compilers are often available to port applications from one system to another. A company can benefit from reduced infrastructure costs, improved performance, and minimal effort. It can also continue to get value from legacy investments.
Rehost
Deploy existing elements into a new environment without having to recompile, modify code, or change functionality. Rehosting allows organizations to maintain their legacy systems like ERP and databases and benefit from better performance and security provided by the cloud infrastructure.
Rehosting (also known as the "lift-and-shift" migration method) allows organizations to move to the cloud more quickly without having to refactor existing systems. The enterprise moves its existing ERP, database, or other workload to cloud optimization in the same form (e.g., moving SAP from an on-premises server to AWS or GCP). This approach does not fully leverage cloud native tools or performance improvements. There are emulators that run legacy systems perfectly in modern environments.
Renovate & Re Architect
It involves the implementation of new technologies at different levels of an application to make use of cloud-based systems or other systems. This option is often used in hybrid environments to optimize the code. This involves making changes to the backend without making major changes to the front end or functionality of legacy systems. It is less disruptive than an entire rewrite. However, technology limitations can limit what's possible.
In this case, an organization could move the database from a monolithic app to the cloud platform and still run the majority of it locally. The term suggests that the application architecture is optimized. This can be done with code changes. It may be necessary to make adjustments to the backend of legacy systems to ensure seamless integration with cloud model elements. This allows an organization to rationalize every application component to determine the most suitable platform for better performance.
Retain
Maintain your current environment without any changes or updates. A merger announcement, an end-of-life announcement, or another consideration could mean that modernization is not a viable option. Even if the decision to keep is made in the short term, a strategy should be developed that will ensure the sustainability of key functions.
Retention is not a strategy for the long term. It's a temporary measure. Organizations should take care when adopting a "kick-it-down-the-road" strategy. The longer an inefficient and resource-heavy system remains in place, the less money and resources will be available for innovation.
A retain approach often requires the creation of "connectors" and "bridges" that allow modern application elements to work with each other. AI models that are low-tech and proven, such as Robotics Process Automation(RPA), can breathe new life into legacy systems while requiring minimal investment and risk.
Retire
After evaluating workloads, usage, and business strategy impact on the system, retire the entire system. You may decide that after assessing the workload, it's best to retire the application. Then, move the remaining users over to the alternate system that is already in place. This may require a process redesign in order to fill the operational gap left by the retired system. It may also provide an opportunity for better and more optimized business objectives and processes and smarter business outcomes.
Migration Of Legacy Systems Can Be A Challenge
The process of modernizing legacy systems is not without its challenges. CIOs and other IT leaders should expect to encounter the following challenges:
- Business Transformation Resistance: Legacy system modernization goes beyond IT to transform processes and increase efficiency. Focusing on business processes and then technology allows organizations to better prepare and assess all the effects of transformation. This includes cultural and technical impacts. Retraining and developing processes without planning can be costly to productivity and even employee morale in the event that the organization resists the change.
- Balancing Risk: Properly assessing financial, operational, and security risks is crucial. In many organizations, however, it is difficult to gather the data needed to reach a consensus and make informed decisions.
- Data Management Constraints: Before embarking upon a modernization initiative, it is important that an organization take a hard look at the data it has. It's time to update governance rules and clean up dirty data to avoid it being thrown into a new system. Find ways to manage data better and use it to help the business goals of your organization.
Migration Of Legacy Systems To The Cloud
Migration of Legacy applications and systems to the cloud can be easier when using a private cloud Environment. Private Clouds allow for more custom and specific configurations than Public Clouds. This makes migration easier and allows legacy applications to be run without modification, if necessary.
Companies can take advantage of the scalability and flexibility of cloud environments by migrating their legacy applications to a Private Cloud. They will still be able to maintain custom configurations. They will also be able to optimize their costs. In most cases, it is possible to deploy an environment that closely simulates the original. A Private Cloud Application that uses hardware keys can be used with even antiquated operating systems like Windows XP and Windows 2000. This method was commonly used to validate licenses for applications.
Data Migration
When updating or migrating an existing system, data migration is crucial. It is essential to follow these steps in order to ensure successful data migration.
- Ensure that all data can be safely extracted.
- Data transformation to match the new formats.
- Data cleaning to prevent quality issues (incomplete data, duplicated data, or data not formatted properly).
- Before loading all the data into the new system, import a sample of data in order to check for errors and ensure that the legacy system migration will go as planned.
Legacy applications can be mission-critical for business efficiency. The migration of legacy systems into the cloud should be carefully assessed and planned. Our experts can assist you in finding the right cloud hosting solution for legacy applications.
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Conclusion
A legacy system refers to an outdated system, technology, or software application which is still used by organizations because it performs its original functions. Legacy systems are usually no longer supported and maintained, and their growth is limited. They cannot be easily replaced. Partner with experts that have successfully completed many successful legacy system modernizations across industries and geographical regions.
Cisin, with years of experience, can help you modernize legacy applications, transform IT operations, and improve business processes. Our specialized team of experts can help you at any stage of the process, from assessing your IT needs to developing, implementing, and integrating new technologies.
