Why Migration of Legacy Applications is Important

Most large organizations have their IT built in legacy systems. Legacy refers to erstwhile programming systems. Legacy systems are built on programming languages such as Fortran which have in the past few years become obsolete.

Legacy systems are characterized as being extremely large, cumbersome and high maintenance. They are costly to maintain and continue to become inefficient in performance. In the same light, hardware that supports legacy application is gradually becoming obsolete and expensive to maintain as well.

Considering that most software professionals are being trained in the modern software development language, it has become difficult to get professionals to maintain legacy systems. In addition, legacy systems are incompatible with the modern IT systems which inhibit functionalities such as data sharing. These IT consulting services offer limited scalability and flexibility.

Businesses are on a global race to dominate their industries, acquire customers and increase revenue. To achieve these goals, they should operate in modernized and efficient IT systems. This has necessitated legacy application migration to modern platforms such as .net, the cloud, SalesForce and more. Legacy migration can either be done by migrating the entire application to the new platform of rewriting the legacy application on a new platform.

A need for migration can arise from technology becoming obsolete. Many organizations realize that as more technological advancements arise, some or their entire IT systems may be rendered obsolete. Some organizations may make a deliberate decision to migrate to upgrade their system functionality and accessibility to suit their growing business demands.

On the other hand, some businesses migrate to reduce the cost and time spent on maintaining legacy system, and to prevent their system security from being affected by disruptive technologies.

Why migration of legacy application is important

Legacy application migration to modern platforms presents numerous benefits including:

1 - Cost of software licensing is cheaper in modern systems than in legacy systems.
2 - Hardware infrastructure costs and maintenance cost are lower on modern platforms
3 - Modern systems allow for easier integration with other systems
4 - Modern system software is easier and faster to use
5 - Modern systems offer flexibility and scalability
6 - Modern systems offer user friendly interface
7 - It enables for contemporary enhancement of it systems by enabling search integration, social networking and other modern technology functionalities.
8 - Migrated systems lower the risk of being outdated as they can be continuously updated to match up to the latest advancements in technology.
9 - They are high performance and more efficient
10 - Modern systems are more dependable. They are supportive, reliable and stable

Technology is changing fast. Besides, business demand and competition is increasing. IT systems in businesses play a major role in operations, data stooge and processing as well as customer acquisition and relations.

As such, only businesses that ride the wave of technology change will be successful. Otherwise, businesses using IT systems of the past will be disrupted and in the worst case, rendered obsolete. The challenges presented by legacy systems and the numerous benefits offered by modern platforms have necessitated legacy application migration.