Your existing legacy systems are undoubtedly crucial to the smooth operation of your business legacy. However, it is worth considering their actual performance. While they may function adequately at times, do they rely on extensive efforts from your IT department to keep them running smoothly? Are you experiencing delays in obtaining necessary information from newer systems? Are you noticing a growing number of bugs?
If these concerns resonate with you, it may be time to consider updating your legacy systems. Low-code development could be the ideal solution for supporting application modernization. By embracing low-code, you can benefit from a smart, modern, and flexible approach to modernizing your legacy software systems. Grab hold of the opportunity to optimize your legacy system modernization for business operations and stay ahead in today’s dynamic digital landscape.
4 Common Examples of Legacy Systems
A legacy system refers to any software or hardware that is outdated yet still in use. It’s important to note that a legacy system isn’t necessarily an aged technology. It can encompass a system lacking vendor support or failing to meet the evolving requirements of an organization. Alternatively, it could involve a suite of common legacy systems, databases and applications that continue to drive critical internal workflows, leaving businesses feeling trapped in the past using a disconnected, outdated platform.
Moving on, we will delve into four examples of legacy operating systems that make use of outdated technologies, frequently posing challenges to companies striving for modernization. As an IT Executive, it is crucial to recognize these obstacles in order to strategically navigate the ever-changing technological landscape.
There are many types of legacy systems are out there, but there are four legacy systems that are generally identified as the most common:
SAP
.NET and Oracle
Lotus Notes and HCL Domino
Sharepoint
SAP: Unlock New Value with Low-Code
Organizations running legacy systems such as SAP recognize the value that customizations bring to meet unique business needs. However, these customizations can be costly to develop and hinder future upgrades and migrations to SAP’s latest versions.
You can easily extend your legacy SAP systems with web and mobile front-ends. By leveraging low-code application development, you can unlock new value legacy systems with user-friendly web and mobile interfaces without relying on scarce and expensive SAP-specific programming languages and resources.
It’s time to modernize SAP in the cloud at your own pace. For some organizations, legacy SAP systems are holding back the innovation necessary to maintain a competitive edge. Low-code application development enables cloud-based innovation alongside existing systems, keeping legacy systems and modern systems together, facilitating data sharing and delivering new capabilities. With this approach, companies can modernize their systems gradually, decommissioning legacy applications as each new component comes online, ensuring a seamless and complete transformation.
.NET and Oracle: A New and Simplified Experience with Low-Code
Initially, custom-built core enterprise systems leveraging legacy technologies like .Net and Oracle, offer a significant competitive advantage over commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions as they precisely cater to the organization’s unique requirements. However, over time these legacy systems encounter similar challenges as commercial systems, with the sluggish and cumbersome process of integrating all new technologies, features and capabilities into the core system.
Reconstructing the user experience, business logic, and data flows from scratch as a personally developed cloud-native application may consume an excessive amount of time, budget, and resources. Nevertheless, constructing a fresh experience using a low-code platform can provide the flexibility required to expedite technical support and the development of essential features and capabilities using existing code, enabling swift updates.
Lotus Notes and HCL Domino: Replacing Outdated Technology with Low-Code
Lotus Notes is constructed on a robust architecture that boasts over 30 years of experience. It incorporates a proprietary development framework, database, programming model, scripting language, and deployment methodology. However, in today’s landscape, for majority of the organizations these aspects no longer provide the security, flexibility, and agility that have become indispensable in modern applications.
For businesses seeking to stay ahead, it is paramount to replace legacy code in their Lotus Notes applications with a groundbreaking, visual, model-driven, and AI-based development environment. This approach allows for a complete reimagination of capabilities. With Low-Code, you can create sophisticated and secure offline experiences that support a wide range of functions, from simple data caching to complex offline data access and synchronization. Low-Code application development enables businesses to pave the way for streamlined and efficient operational future.
SharePoint: Re-envision Collaboration with Low-Code
Unlike many legacy systems, the costly and complex on-premises version of Microsoft SharePoint -which was once deemed innovative but now falls short by today’s standards, a low code development approach offers organizations the opportunity to migrate from aging SharePoint applications. This enables data migration and the re-envisioning of internal and external portal applications with highly optimized web and mobile apps that have enhanced capabilities for reporting, governance, and scalability. IT Executives should definitely take notice of this transformative solution.
3 legacy modernization strategies : Time to Upgrade Outdated Technology
In the current era of digital transformation, app modernization has become the standard practice. This entails evaluating obsolete systems and legacy application software, and replacing them with contemporary technologies to effectively address the future business requirements. As a Chief Information Officer, this is a crucial aspect to consider in order to ensure uninterrupted growth and success in your organization’s digital journey.
As you explore application software modernization and solutions, consider the following three core classifications:
Replacement: Rip and replace — sounds satisfying, doesn’t it? With this approach to legacy modernization, you would completely replace the entire system with a new one. The benefit of this is that you’d be starting from scratch, which would allow you to build an entirely new platform that addresses your specific business needs. However, it will naturally take considerable time and effort to review your current systems, determine what’s working and what isn’t, and rebuild according to your new specifications.
Migration: Another solution is migration. In this case, components of your legacy system are taken and moved to another platform. A simple example is moving your digital assets, such as processes, workflows, and applications, to the cloud. With this approach, the goal is to identify significant roadblocks and flaws and fix them with newer applications or code that will help modernize your systems. The main challenge here is ensuring that the migration process goes smoothly, without any hiccups that could disrupt your business. One way to manage this is to use an enterprise microservices approach.
Extension: A system extension can occupy the space between a rip-and-replace approach and migrating the majority of your systems and applications. It involves gradually adding to your current legacy system with ongoing integrations and testing. A system extension can enable you to restructure and optimize applications and code without tearing your design apart from the ground up. This approach tends to present a lower risk because your systems are moving and expanding one by one, and any significant failures or delays are more likely to be isolated. However, the process tends to take longer.
When contemplating modernizing legacy systems or adopting a system modernization strategy to avoid legacy systems, it is imperative to meticulously evaluate available alternatives and determine the most suitable solution for immediate and future requirements.
Don’t get left behind due to Legacy Systems
Outdated systems keeping legacy software may impede your business’s growth and competitiveness. Consider Excel spreadsheets, while important for day-to-day operations, they have limitations. However, a low-code solution can facilitate digitalization and automation of your business processes.
Legacy systems often come with numerous hidden costs. Continuous upgrades and maintenance drain valuable time and energy from the IT department. Moreover, the integration of new applications and programs becomes increasingly challenging for outdated systems. In today’s fast-paced business environment, organizations must prioritize agility and flexibility. Failing to pivot, test new ideas and processes, and deploy swiftly to replace legacy systems can lead to complications. Furthermore, outdated systems often struggle to integrate with applications designed to streamline workflows and automate processes, leaving organizations searching for superior alternatives.
Improving the internal legacy systems work around that your applications interact with holds the key to success. However, it’s important to acknowledge that maintaining legacy systems and modernizing applications is a complex endeavor. Before making any decisions, IT Executives must carefully consider the following factors:
how your current legacy system and any new systems will integrate
how to maintain quality control and security over a new system
how you will ensure that any new processes and applications meet specific regulatory or compliance needs
how much the updates will cost and how long they will take, including the time needed to train employees
Organizations must carefully consider the financial implications of maintaining business as usual versus the investment of time and resources required to address these security breaches and vulnerabilities and update their legacy systems. This necessitates identifying appropriate solutions.