Legacy systems refer to old, outdated computer systems, applications, languages, and databases that are still being used by organizations to run critical business functions. These systems were created years ago using technologies that are now considered obsolete. However, many companies rely heavily on legacy systems for vital operations and are reluctant to replace or modernize them due to the high risks and costs involved.
As technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, maintaining and upgrading legacy systems has become increasingly challenging. Organizations that decide to take on legacy modernization projects face many common pitfalls and barriers along the way.
Finding and Retaining Skills to Maintain Aging Systems
One of the top roadblocks to revamping legacy platforms is simply finding qualified and experienced resources to maintain outdated languages. This challenge underscores the growing importance of legacy modernization services in today’s IT landscape.
- Most IT professionals now specialize in modern programming languages like Java and .NET.
- Fewer and fewer developers have expertise in legacy languages like COBOL and FORTRAN, which were commonly used to build mainframe systems and enterprise applications over the past several decades.
As the workforce ages, veteran programmers who understand these old systems are retiring in droves. Organizations are struggling to replace their institutional knowledge and find a new generation of developers willing to learn and support legacy languages. Without internal teams or external partners to sustain aging frameworks, system risks and downtimes increase exponentially.
High Costs and Tight Budgets
There’s no doubt that refreshing mainframes, databases, and other aging platforms requires hefty investment. For some companies, dedicating capital expenditure to upgrade legacy systems takes away from funding innovation initiatives that generate more visible returns on investment. Many IT budgets simply can’t accommodate comprehensive modernization initiatives spread over multiple years.
Executives must strategically balance costs of maintaining old systems compared to making investments in new technologies and digital transformation. Incremental modernization efforts spread over longer time periods can help ease budget constraints. Companies also struggle weighing expenses of upgrading legacy platforms that still meet business needs compared to costs incurred by failing, insecure systems.
Integration Challenges with New Systems
Very few organizations opt for wholesale replacements of legacy platforms. More often, aspects of legacy systems are modernized while maintaining connections with existing production systems. Touching only certain parts of technology stacks introduces risky integration challenges. Revising legacy user interfaces, applications or databases has cascading impacts on related components.
IT architects spend significant time mapping intricate dependencies across legacy and modern solutions to anticipate where integration failures may occur. Companies also underestimate needs to clean, migrate and map necessary data from old systems to new platforms. Meticulous integration planning is imperative for safe legacy modernization.
Lack of System Documentation
Companies that have relied on legacy systems for 30+ years often lack proper documentation about these aging platforms. Original developers failed to thoroughly document system architectures, code and data models. Programmers who are new to supporting the platforms have limited visibility into how all the connected components interact. Without comprehensive documentation, making any changes to legacy frameworks becomes extremely risky.
Organizations attempting to extend old systems or migrate them to modern platforms must first invest significant reverse engineering efforts to thoroughly understand all the interdependencies. Otherwise integration failures frequently occur as legacy databases, code and interfaces are revised or accessed in new ways.
Security and Compliance Gaps
Older legacy frameworks were built decades before cybersecurity became imperative and regulations like HIPAA emerged. These aging platforms lack core security controls, visibility and data protection capabilities native to modern systems. As threats rapidly evolve, vulnerabilities exposed by legacy systems greatly magnify risk profiles for entire organizations.
IT leaders advocating for legacy modernization highlight security and compliance gaps to help justify priorities and budgets for upgrading projects. They demonstrate how new controls applied during modernization can automate vulnerability detection, threat monitoring, access controls and activity logging to substantially improve risk protection.
Finding the Optimal Modernization Approach
As executives recognize needs to modernize legacy environments they next grapple with identifying the best strategies and approaches. Many interdependent variables spanning costs, risks, business objectives and resource constraints make decisions complex. Companies consider a mix of options – consolidate onto cloud platforms, rewrite legacy code for modern languages, create API interfaces to connect old and new systems.
Finding the right balance between completely replacing aging systems and incrementally interfacing with them is key. Companies also struggle between committing to sweeping, multi-year programs compared to tackling modernization through smaller, iterative projects. Defining organization-specific strategies that align legacy upgrades with business goals and long-term migration paths requires thoughtful analysis and planning.
Strategies for Overcoming Modernization Obstacles
Recognizing common barriers is the first step for IT leaders to formulate practical strategies that fuel successful legacy modernization programs. Applying focused approaches to mitigate and overcome known hurdles helps technology teams demonstrate step-by-step progress. Some proven methods for addressing the top challenges include:
Preserve Institutional Knowledge Through Documentation
Waiting too long before tackling documentation makes reversing legacy systems immensely tedious and costly. Assigning technical team members to start documenting architecture diagrams, data models, interfaces and business processes in tandem with daily support helps capture tribal knowledge. This gradual approach is more sustainable than expecting specialists to recall minute details after years focused solely on maintenance. Developers should thoroughly document system components before attempting to modify or migrate any legacy platforms.
Build a Legacy System Inventory and Communications Plan
Without executive awareness about current legacy expenses and limitations, modernization projects won’t get approved or prioritized. Make sure business leaders understand high-level system diagrams detailing how legacy and modern solutions interact across business functions. Estimate annual costs for operating aging technology compared to transition investments. Illustrate how reliance on dwindling skills and lack of agility with old systems introduces substantial risks.
Take an Iterative, Use Case Approach to Modernization
Attempting to transform large, entrenched systems within one large-scale effort is almost always doomed to fail and permanently stall modernization efforts. Instead, IT should categorize aging platforms by areas of functionality and determine the most critical sources of delays in performance or poor quality. Begin with 1-2 bounded use cases and attempt to modernize them in 3-6 months through a few selected projects.
Examples may include replacing an old user interface, re-platforming a critical transactional database, or introducing a modern data warehouse for improved analytics. Deliver quick wins through projects that solve defined problems, enabling business leaders to immediately recognize the value IT delivers through modernization efforts.
Develop Partnerships to Secure Legacy and Modern Technology Skills
Accept that locating experts in legacy languages will require relationships with specialty IT consultancies. Even if you find technologists to train internally, few will choose sustaining old languages over more appealing project work. Formalize strategic partnerships with niche firms that maintain deep legacy expertise through intergenerational knowledge sharing.
These firms also employ tools and modern coding languages to interface with and extend legacy systems. Complement their aging tech skills with internal teams or channel partners proficient in modern software development, cloud platforms and emerging technology specialties like AI.
Take Advantage of Automation and Integration Tools
Manual modernization efforts are time-intensive, risk prone and costly. Solutions now exist to automate many rote tasks associated with upgrading legacy platforms. Look for tools that scan and document aging system architectures with minimal internal intervention. Integration middleware seamlessly connects old platforms with new solutions, while API gateways speed access to legacy system functions without invasive changes.
Low code platforms quickly re-platform legacy UIs and workflows to web interfaces. Automated data migration tools port aging databases over to modern systems without complex ETL coding. Leverage intelligent automation capabilities to reduce the heavy lifting required to unravel and transition legacy platforms.
Secure Funding for Prioritized Modernization Initiatives
Competing with other IT investments focused on digital innovation often sidelines legacy modernization projects.
- Make the risk reduction case to justify funding to business leaders and Boards more accustomed to judging ROI.
- Develop realistic TCO comparisons that capture hard costs plus potential losses from legacy system failures.
- Outline flexibility, competitive advantage and revenue benefits delivered through IT agility that aging platforms inhibit.
Start small by sponsoring assessments to baseline TCO models or identify the most vulnerable legacy components. Fund a pilot to demonstrate feasibility for a series bounded modernization project. Secure commitment for the first phase of a long-term legacy transition plan.
Conclusion
The risks and headaches imposed by reliance on increasingly fragile legacy systems escalate each year as workforces retire and cyber threats multiply. Postponing modernization investments inevitably leads to costly outages, security breaches or loss of market share to more nimble competitors.
As leaders formulate long-term legacy modernization roadmaps, focusing first on the highest risk priorities makes pragmatic sense. Solving pain points around the most vulnerable systems establishes solid foundations for subsequent modernization phases.
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