When is it time to break up with your legacy system?

By Michael Visentin, Manager, TransMigration Services, Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

Pundits love predicting the death of legacy systems, but in reality many large corporate and government organisations still will not entrust business-critical applications to anything but the most proven platforms. For these organisations, it is simply a matter of trust. Legacy applications, mainframe systems and other mature information technology platforms represent the fruit of literally thousands of staff hours invested in business expertise, process refinement and engineering improvement. They are stable, mature and reliable.

Nevertheless, many of these systems are nearing the end of their working lives, whether through hardware obsolescence, inflexible architectures or expiring vendor support contracts. Most are complex and costly to operate: research from Gartner and other analysts indicates that an average large enterprise spends 60 to 80 per cent of its IT budget on maintaining mainframe systems and the applications they run.

Faced with ever-tighter budgets, CIOs and IT managers need to contain these costs while also looking for low-risk opportunities to extend and transform their core business systems. And since no two enterprises are the same, CIOs need a range of options.

This is where Fujitsu’s TransMigration Services can help. We provide choices for customers who want to reduce the costs and risks associated with legacy systems but also need to enhance functionality and responsiveness. We work with enterprise IT teams to develop migration, extension or replacement strategies that make legacy systems more responsive to changing business needs.

Overcoming the fear factor

The central position of legacy technologies puts CIOs in a bind. While they are increasingly reliant on these mission-critical systems and cannot risk failure, many legacy environments are becoming less reliable due to their overall complexity. The underlying technologies are often difficult to change, so core IT systems can often fall behind business needs. Yet technology managers worry that any changes they make will only exacerbate existing problems and reward them with complex and difficult outcomes.

Scarred by past migration failures, many organisations are hesitant about change. But if there’s one constant in business life, it is change. Doing nothing is simply not an option. Fujitsu TransMigration Services give enterprise IT leaders the information they need to overcome any lingering fear of failure so they can embrace change comfortably. We help organisations take stock of their legacy assets and identify opportunities to extract greater value by implementing new technologies with minimal risk. We normally demonstrate how to deliver a realistic and achievable return on investment in just 12 to 18 months.

Accepting the challenge of change

IT managers who accept the challenge of change usually aspire to reduce operating costs so they can free up funds to invest in platforms for growth. So what are their options?

Some opt to replace their established systems with off-the-shelf software. The business case for these projects is often based on an assumption that the software package will provide an 80 per cent functional fit with existing business processes, with only 20 per cent of tasks requiring costly customisation work.

However, real-world experience indicates that one-size-fits-all software rarely delivers according to plan for medium-to-large businesses. High-profile examples like the Sydney Water billing system and the RMIT University student administration system suggest that the expensive reality is often more like a 20 per cent functional fit with 80 per cent of business processes requiring customisation.

Recent anecdotal evidence also suggests that many company boards are now rejecting or seriously questioning the business case for large-scale packaged software implementations because of concerns about risk and cost over-runs.

Up to 50 per cent reduction in legacy migration costs

A better approach, in many cases, is to preserve the core business logic from your existing legacy systems but migrate the underlying operating environment to modern, standards-based hardware and software.

With unique intellectual property, Fujitsu is one of the few organisations qualified to offer a one-stop shop for legacy transformation services using this approach. Our experience and skills let us deliver business benefits and ensure uninterrupted service from the legacy environment. Complementary open systems skills enable Fujitsu to offer clients a single point of accountability for legacy transformation. This lets you remain focused on your core business while using Fujitsu to deliver a cost-effective solution.

In work for clients in Australia and New Zealand, Fujitsu's TransMigration Services have halved legacy system migration costs. This dramatic reduction is achieved by combining proven capabilities, methodologies and experience with innovative solutions for automated conversion of legacy systems. Customer experience shows that automated conversion is at least 60 per cent faster than manual migration.

Moreover, Fujitsu’s approach normally costs less than one third of what a large enterprise would typically spend on a large-scale software deployment. For customers, the result is a solution that has a high degree of business fit and that can reduce operating costs by more than A$1 million per year.

More and more enterprises know they must soon take action over their legacy systems before costs escalate too far or technical disaster strikes. Fortunately, there have never been more options available.

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More information

For further information, contact Michael Visentin on +61 3 9924 3271 or email michael.visentin@au.fujitsu.com.

Fujitsu TransMigration Services

Mainframe Migration Alliance