Business Case for
Legacy Modernization Solutions

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.

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