Can APIs Solve Legacy Modernization and Integration Challenge?
Venky Kurapati
Technology Driven Organizational Change Champion Transforming the Business by Serving Teams with Empathy in Pursuit of Self-Realization
As the software industry continues to transform and reinvent, business enterprises throughout the world still use several legacy technologies to run business operations. Some of the examples of these legacy technologies include:
- COBOL
- VSAM
- IMS
- FORTRAN
- C
- Visual Basic
- PowerBuilder
- FoxPro
When these technologies were new, they helped companies solve complex business problems. However, the annual operating cost and business risk to maintain these applications keep increasing with time. Some of the reasons for this are difficulty in finding vendor support, loosing employees with above skill sets due to retirement, and acquiring new employees or consultants with the above skill sets.
API technology promises to offer new ways to leverage and expose the business data and functionality implemented using above legacy technologies. Once APIs are developed, they can be easily and cost-effectively integrated with other applications and services within the company to deliver new solutions or outside the company to reach more customers and partners.
Also, APIs developed by exposing legacy applications' data and functions can help in formulating the business case to eventually decommission above legacy applications thereby reducing annual operating cost and risk associated with the Application Portfolio Management of a company.
Are there any vendors in the industry who offer cost-effective tools or solutions in developing APIs focusing on the legacy-enablement of any of the above technologies? If yes, can you please respond to this post and provide your comments so we know? Did we miss any other legacy development technologies?
Also, appreciate any comments from anyone regarding this topic to share your ideas or similar challenges you encountered.
Technology Driven Organizational Change Champion Transforming the Business by Serving Teams with Empathy in Pursuit of Self-Realization
9 年Indra and Omkar - Agree with your comments. Thank you!
Senior Vice President, AI at Chubb
9 年+1 Indra. Integration of legacy technologies by "api-fication" is often limited, in performance and feasibility, by the poorest performing application in the mix. APIs provide novel ways to make use of legacy applications, or technologies that aren't platform agnostic, without having to go through application modernization, but that cannot be a seen as a one-size-fits-all solution. However, for all practical purposes, API economy arrived with the digital revolution.
Enterprise Architect @ Prosperity Life Insurance
9 年One challenge i see with this is, while API is a an obvious enabler and solution.. The legacy technologies cannot scale (aka be converted to micro services) ...