Monday, 15 August 2016 Blog ehdf

Contending with Legacy IT Infrastructure

CIOs are forever being told that they need to make their IT operations more agile, and better able to respond to changes in the market. However, that’s easier said than done when you’ve got a legacy architecture to contend with.

Legacy IT systems still survive in the region, but probably less than some other regions, especially those that started IT earlier on. It’s not just the older and larger organizations in the region that face this challenge, but a surprising number of medium and ‘relatively’ younger organizations (less than 25 years old) also still have some legacy systems in their IT real estate.

There are a large variety of challenges with legacy systems and even a few advantages. Most legacy systems surviving today are more commonly found in the Banking, Healthcare, Retail, Public, and Telecom sectors. These systems have proven to be comparatively stable and reliable, and have been fine tuned for purpose over the years and are considered more secure and also proprietary.

However, there are definite obstacles including but not limited to; the very high cost of support and maintenance, proprietary and un-open for modernization to support new demanded features and capabilities, lack of resources to support them, documentation, complexity, compliance and regulatory concerns, and more.

If organizations do not adapt to change, they risk losing business advantage and hence IT organizations face a daunting challenge.

Some suggestions to get started

Middle Eastern CIO’s, like their counterpart’s world over, now have to carefully weigh the business needs of their organization and navigate a path that would yield the best value to their business and have the least operational impacts and overall costs. Many CIO’s take a cautious approach, but quite a few are also taking a drastic approach which could either be fork-lifting or staying with legacy IT which is not necessarily the most efficient or effective.

To remedy this, there are several options available starting with careful review and planning while considering options such as:

-Undertake internal or external assessments, while adhering to required standards and best practices such as Enterprise Architecture / TOGAF, ITIL, COBIT, ISO, SOA, etc.
-Feasibility option to stay with the legacy IT systems or to stay with legacy but migrate to more standard platforms such as a Unix to Linux migration
-Consider the feasibility to perform a fork-lift upgrade or to make gradual changes
-The option to rip and replace

While undertaking such reviews and planning, it is advisable for companies to reach out to a specialist who can guide and implement the requisite changes.

However, ripping out legacy technology and starting with new technology may sound like a complete cure, however, CIO’s need to avoid symptomatic treatment of their problems and undertake a more thorough assessment of their needs in sync with their business requirements. Following a well thought-out assessment and strategy will yield better and more sustainable results and should be more efficient and cost effective.