IS THERE A RIGHT TIME TO REPLACE YOUR OVERSTRECHED SYSTEM
If you have started thinking about a new IT system, then you'll know it's not easy to pick the "Correct" time for the upgrade.
If a business stands still it will usually fail. The market is constantly requiring companies to adapt their offering, but many companies put off addressing their out of date IT systems.
There are several obvious reasons why you would want to replace your current system and some are more esoteric. There can be plenty of challenges along the road of replacement from understanding where the technology road map is moving so that your new system is not old from day one to the cost and organizational problems in terms of resource disruption and risk of upgrading; in this blog we will be taking a look at why replacement is nessessary and when is the best time to tackle it.
What's stopping you?
When asked to define a legacy system the satirical answer may be 'One that already works!'; so what's holding back most people is the fear that they will get a new one that doesn't work - at least from day one; legacy system weave themselves into an orgainisation in sometimes invisible ways and the dilema faciing senior decision makers is that a new system will cause some process or other to fail in a non-obvious way or at an inconvienient time.
When is convienient?
Most companies nowadays rely on IT system to be up 24/7 by 365 - consumers using online platforms don't sleep or when they do someone somewhere wont be; a system which goes down for a day or two spells serious degredation in both immedidate and future profits due to reputational damage - so really why risk it...
Any sufficient advanced technology appears to be magic
This famous quote from Arthur C Clark was talking about the latest technology but it's also true of ancient technology if you don't know how it works - most legacy systems were written by staff who have long since either moved on to other roles, leaving the company relient on technology which is streteched but entierly opaque from the outside - it's mission critical but no-one understands how it works.
You could patch it up - after all you've done it any number times already or you could preserve it in aspic - think virutualization where the legacy operating system is preserved with the legacy application - this only goes so far as your also preserviing any legacy security concerns.
Replacing the system however is just the start of the journey usually there will be pent up demand to change other things within an organization as soon as the genie is out of the bottle and this makes senior management nervous - why not just give it another year or two - it's working now so why rock the boat.'
So why should you replace then, given all the fear?
The problems are not going to get any better.
If you've got issues today with adapting a legacy system - then you'll have twice as many sooner or later - problems like the difficuly of adapting an application to outside interfaces; as others upgrade you are left behind. You will watch with envy as the latest Agile startup take a small bite out of your customer base then a big one when they easily adapt to change whilst your seemingly standing still frozen inside a legacy prison.
Hidden Growth
Lets say the system is meeting absolutly all your needs and it even adapts to the market place, what could go wrong - looks like nothing but the hidden issue is capacity when your staff needs are growing you can easily see that you need more desks, but legacy systems can have hidden tipping points beyond which they won't scale easily or at all - just when you need them the most you could be let down - if you wait to replace a system till then - you just won't be able too in time when it matters.
We just don't like to think about...'
Security - you've seen it on the news - companies hit by malware and security hacks - legacy systems by there very nature are vunerable as threats which weren't known about yesterday can't be defended from today.
Time waits for no man
The original builders of your legacy system may be retired and that's telling you the application should know when it should retire; the latest startups are taking business with agile innovatve ideas whilst your stuck in the slow lane; there is one constant in the work today - change - it gets faster every year; the legacy system must be replaced eventually so the only decision is when!
When should the replacement plan begin
At its heart a succesfull business is one which is delivering for its customers both the ones you've got already and ones you want to get in the future; your IT systems need to meet the two goals of aligning with current business needs and aligning with future strategy.
The plan starts when the roadmap runs out
A forward planning company can see the end of the road map where its applications won't support future stragegy; your application lives within an eco-system of other services; the OS and integration points - if your system is not evolving with theirs then it time is running out.'
The plan start when the road has run out
The roadmap was a distant memory, the applicaiton is rotting in place; the developers who wrote it are long gone and the documentation is irrelevant as it hasn't been kept up to date or is just not understandable to the staff that are left - the biggest fear here could be an exodus - a new company nearby exanding with new technologies to offer its staff and you could lose yours practically overnight - if their the last people with knowledge of a legacy system including the technology its built with - the clocking is ticking on a downtime disaster.
Conclusion
There are plenty of signals that the time has come to replace a system, be it strategy, staff or environment - so whether you call it expentiture or you class building a new systems as an investment which it surely can be, the time is now to replace a legacy system - or push the snooze button on your clock and hope for the best.