Old software can hold a special place in a person’s heart, especially if it is integral to getting their business to where it is now. However, legacy systems can damage your organisation in several ways if they remain as an older version. Learn how to handle legacy application migration to streamline your business processes without missing a beat.
Article Breakdown
What is Legacy Software?
First and foremost, let’s break down what exactly legacy software is so that you can identify it within your organisation. Legacy software is any outdated computer software or hardware that is still currently in use yet is seemingly unable to interact with any new systems. This tends to be a setback in the business processes, computing speed, and overall organisational capabilities.
Ways Legacy Software Can Impact an Organization
As technology advances, it’s only natural that some systems will become outdated and abandoned in favor of the new. While adopting new technology can be a daunting proposition, not upgrading legacy software can impact your business in four major ways:
- Legacy software can slow business processes down
One common side effect of legacy software is the existence of data silos. In the old days, legacy systems were never designed to communicate with each other in the same way as the cloud, meaning every legacy system stored its data.
Therefore, a company may end up with teams who are out of the loop if they only use legacy software, as new software will not be able to pull or communicate data to those systems.
- A lack of compatibility with new software
A lack of communication between data isn’t the only issue that legacy systems present. Newer systems don’t have the ability to interact with legacy systems at all. This means that new updates that offer additional features, additional storage capabilities, and speed improvements will be unavailable to legacy systems.
- Your legacy software cannot scale
Legacy software doesn’t have the ability to scale to the same degree as modern systems. As your business grows and data increases, performance, speed, and security will also need to improve. However, legacy systems will not be able to meet this need as they can’t integrate with newer systems.
- The vendor may no longer support legacy software.
The final problem an organization may run into with legacy software is that the creator of the software no longer supports it. This means there will be no more updates targeting security, enhancements, performance issues, bugs, or anything else. In addition, without a support team, there won’t be a number to call for troubleshooting the legacy system.
All of the above can damage a business drastically. Therefore, to improve business processes, organizations must upgrade their legacy software or migrate the data over to newer systems as soon as possible.
How to Upgrade Legacy Software
Moving legacy software data over to modern software is a process that takes time. Follow the below steps to build your migration strategy:
- Assess your current legacy system: Identify any shortcomings that you’re experiencing with your legacy software. This could be speed issues, performance issues, or a number of problems. Take this information and compare it to a list of newer software that may be able to solve those needs.
- Choose how to upgrade your legacy system: When modernizing an older legacy system, there are a number of strategies to use. One of the most common is the migration of data to a cloud environment and then the enhancement of that data. Other times, legacy systems need a complete overhaul and replacement from scratch.
- Create a business plan for the system’s retirement: There will undoubtedly be issues when migrating from an old system to a new one. To avoid total business stoppage, migrate certain system parts before others. Have a new IT team who can troubleshoot this process on your behalf.
Upgrading legacy software can be a painstaking task depending on how outdated your systems are. However, the cost to your business of maintaining those systems will far outweigh any headaches arising from updating company systems.
Consider integration to the cloud. After all, 60% of company data is stored in cloud servers worldwide, which shows the innovation and security that comes from upgrading.
Keep your organization up to date today.
Legacy systems may have gotten your organization to where it currently is, but the minute they start holding your business back, you should consider upgrading. Cloud-based servers are on the rise and can help to streamline speed, performance, and general troubleshooting. So upgrade your business for the future of data today.