Legacy Modernization Solutions

While much of the buzz in the information technology industry surrounds mobile and web-enabled applications, the majority of business transactions globally are processed in legacy systems environments. According to the Aberdeen Group:

“There are $2 trillion worth of mainframe applications in corporations that house approximately 70% of all critical data and logic.”

IAI has extensive experience modernizing legacy systems for clients in both the government and commercial sectors. For over 25 years, systems modernization has been one of IAI’s core capabilities. Having provided modernization solutions to more than 100 clients, IAI’s broad experience spans a wide range of legacy systems architectures.

Industry Driving Forces

Organizations of all types are continually striving to enhance their business information systems. Four major driving forces affect the strategies that CIO’s and other IT leaders pursue relative to their legacy systems. These drivers include:

• Customer needs – The capability and quality of such systems to fulfill the needs of customers often differentiate an organization from its competitors.
• Regulatory changes and emerging standards – Concurrently, organizations are continually under pressure to respond to changes in laws, regulations and policies that govern their operations. Similarly, emerging industry standards may require changes in system functionality.
• Evolving technologies – New functionality in new versions of products or entirely new products provide opportunities to enhance systems. Sometimes, as technology evolves, vendors discontinue support for a component of a system, which in some cases puts mission-critical legacy systems at risk.
• Budget and time constraints – Leaders responsible for legacy systems must endeavor to balance all driving forces with the cost of systems development and operations. In fact, organizations typically face the need to provide more and better functionality in shorter time frames and reduced budgets.

Business Case for Legacy Systems Modernization

As highlighted by the Aberdeen Group and other industry analysts, organizations have invested significantly in their legacy systems over time. Such systems embody the unique business rules of an organization and contain mission-critical data. Typically, they are characterized as being stable, accurate and high-performance. As evidenced by the adverse impact of any down time, legacy systems are an essential element of daily operations. However, legacy systems are generally not easy to change. Reasons include:

• Obsolete platforms – Many legacy systems run on aging mainframe environments with proprietary technology. The cost of operating these environments is typically high.
• Obsolete languages – Similarly, the software components of legacy systems are typically in older third or fourth generation languages (3GL or 4GL). These legacy languages do not provide the functionality needed for Internet-enabled access or easy integration with external systems.
• Lack of documentation – Although legacy systems still in operation typically perform well, many lack sufficient documentation of comprehensive requirements and design. Therefore, it takes people with in-depth knowledge of specific systems to make any modifications or add new functionality.
• Lack of skilled resources – At the same time, the number of people skilled and experienced with these hardware and software environments continues to dwindle, which adds to the problem. New generations of development resources want to spend their time working in modern technology environments, so it is difficult to replace legacy systems experts, who move to other positions or exit the workforce.

Although some organizations have replaced legacy systems with re-engineered systems or products such as CRM or ERP solutions, other organizations have failed in their attempts to do so. What was once thought to be a quick and easy replacement strategy has often proven highly costly in time and money.

Altogether, these factors combine to leave organizations with legacy systems concurrently facing decreasing ability to respond to changes in their environments and increasing costs of sustaining operations. Therefore, organizations need to leverage the investments made to date, while reducing risk and increasing responsiveness to evolving business conditions.

Legacy Modernization Alternatives

IAI provides client organizations with a variety of alternatives for modernizing their legacy systems. Each of these legacy modernization approaches ensures maximum reuse of the unique logic created and maintained by organizations at the heart of their operations, while incorporating new technologies that enable new functionality to be added quickly.

IAI’s Legacy Modernization Practice

To learn more about IAI’s capabilities with legacy systems modernization, see:

• Legacy System Modernization Alternative Approaches
• Solution Architecture
• Methodology and Tools
• Client Summaries
• Micro Focus Partnership
• Modernization Alliances
• Contact us!