Which Old / Legacy Application should be a priority for upgrade?

Background

Our recent experience with some of the leading organisations, of different sizes reveal that their old and legacy systems are holding them to ransom. They are slow, sluggish, perform poorly and pose risk to the organisation due to security and compliance vulnerabilities. The organisations, however, are finding it difficult to upgrade them for several reasons. In this short article, we will discuss which Old / Legacy Applications should be a priority for upgrade?

Systems that are broken and involve downtime?

Our first priority are the systems that are broken and require fixes and patches to keep them running. This could be due to old technology platforms or change in the business processes over the years. These usually are custom written programs that manage business processes to manufacturing, production etc. This may involve systems that require adding new forms, reports etc. Any way you look at them, these should be your first priority.

Contrary to common perception, these can be upgraded or rather transformed to meet requirements of the day, with high productivity and efficiency gains.

Technology Platform Obsolescence

Your second priority should the systems for which, the technology platforms have been or are being retired. Several products from Microsoft and Oracle fall in this category. For example Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 are being retired. Retaining these products means higher maintenance costs and license fees while you have to put up with substandard performance.

As you can imagine, upgrading these systems provides you a reason and opportunity to embark upon your digital and business transformation journey. Now you can start looking at new improved business processes and make use of gizmos of the day such as Apps, AI, Chat, Automation (it is different and much better in present day context) and integration of disparate applications. This integration will increase life of some of your legacy applications.

Old Systems where you are paying high maintenance fee!

Finally, look at upgrading the systems for whom you are paying high maintenance fee, either for security patches or obsolescence or a daily need to maintain 'forms' or 'reports' to meet compliance.

It is a good time to move to new systems that keep your operations efficient, productive and ease compliance. With the new age technology, it is easy and costs a little!

To conclude, if your organisation owns old and risky systems and you need to upgrade them, without risk and within set timeframes with certainty, contact us now. We are easy to reach on [email protected] or call Steve on 03 9802 5516