Here is our understanding of what legacy system modernization is vs. what it isn't -- and the importance of doing it in the first place.
We modernize to rebuild (and rethink) legacy systems to achieve new levels of scalability, maintainability, and flexibility.
Legacy System Modernization is NOT...:
- ...pure “lift and shift.”, e.g. "move everything to the cloud"
- ....copying and pasting existing logic.
- ...requirements-driven
- ...adding a new way of accessing or putting band-aids on a system.
- ...software development alone.
- ...cost reduction alone.
Legacy System Modernization is...:
- ...a re-examination of business needs. Chances are, the business has evolved since the time when a legacy system was created.
- ...value driven. An undrerstanding of what value the business is seeking from its software
- ...updating the approach to building software. How do we avoid creating a new legacy system?
- ...crucial for businesses and agencies looking to remain competitive in an unforgiving and fast-paced market.
Every organization has its workhorse systems: the ones that handle the essential business processes, control regulatory compliance, and store the organization’s most important data. From mainframe data hubs to enterprise billing systems, these are the systems that have provided stable, dependable performance for years or even decades.
But technology moves quickly. Systems built for a client-server world don’t work for today’s mobile workforce. Applications right-sized to yesterday’s market may not scale to new opportunities. Monolithic architectures may not be flexible enough to keep up with the pace of change in business today. And in a tight IT labor market, it may be impossible to find people who know how to maintain the old languages and frameworks as the original developers retire or leave.
Organizations modernize when they need to future-proof systems to adapt to new business conditions, scale up to meet new demands, and improve maintainability – all while retaining the stability, accuracy, and dependability of the systems that they rely on.
A modernization is a highly-visible effort to overhaul a widely-used, mission-critical system. Often, it is an organization’s largest IT investment, with senior staffing and thorough planning to match. Yet research shows that less than half of modernization projects succeed.
Failing to modernize successfully can turn an entire organization away from industry best practices, exacerbating existing IT issues.