Modernising legacy systems can be a daunting task for offices using legacy systems. This roadmap offers concrete steps to ease the transition to digital
Digital technologies were essential in helping entire industries weather the past two years’ upheavals. Today, digital transformation is more than just about cost-cutting; it helps drive significant business value.
Organisations that are going digital by modernising legacy systems or moving to the cloud are already seeing results. For instance, a Deloitte survey found that the cloud helped 80% of respondents better prepare for future challenges and innovate faster, and allowed 70% of organisations to rapidly scale up or down.
But digitalisation can be a daunting task. IT leaders who responded to a 2021 survey said they faced the following challenges when they moved their legacy systems onto a cloud-based infrastructure:
A Q4 2020 survey by Statista echoes these findings, with 81% of respondents saying security concerns were the most significant barrier to cloud adoption, followed by managing cloud spend, a lack of expertise and resources, and governance issues.
Adding complexity to modernisation is the fact that it doesn’t always mean abandoning legacy systems. Enterprises can still derive value from older databases, for instance; these just need to be brought up to date.
The good news is, there are systematic ways to make IT modernisation manageable.
But first things first: why must businesses modernise legacy systems in the first place, and how can they plan for it?
The quick answer: organisations must be able to keep pace with today’s rapidly changing business environment, and harness growth opportunities in the post-pandemic world.
Modernising IT infrastructure will not only help your organisation face upcoming challenges; it could also address some common IT pain points that many have just learned to accept, including:
In Asia-Pacific, the cloud is emerging as a key ingredient in most enterprises’ modernisation roadmaps. Spending on IT for both cloud-based and traditional managed services reached record highs in the second quarter of 2021, surpassing USD 3 billion, according to the Asia-Pacific ISG Index. Worldwide, 74% of IT decision-makers believe that 95% of all workloads will run in the cloud by 2025.
Research by Deloitte highlights how the cloud can help organisations in Asia-Pacific unlock massive opportunities and address operational challenges. In our own experience with data historisation, we also learned that storing legacy data and records in the cloud could cut organisations’ operating costs by 80%.
But, as mentioned, modernisation approaches can incorporate a mix of legacy and newer technology. The key to keeping things running smoothly is a good technical change management strategy.
Before embarking on a digital transformation journey, it’s important to have a strategy with a clear view of the risks and the rewards.
Gartner recommends a three-step evaluation process:
Step 1: Evaluate your legacy systems from both a business perspective and an IT perspective
To see if the way your legacy systems are set up still makes business sense, ask yourself the following questions:
If you answered no to these questions, it may be time to modernise your IT systems or face increased costs and risk vulnerability.
To evaluate the system from an IT perspective, ask these questions:
If you answered yes to these, your system needs an upgrade.
The best modernisation approaches are those with multiple drivers from both business and IT perspectives.
Step 2: Evaluate available modernisation approaches
There are seven common approaches, ranked by ease of implementation:
Step 3: Choose the approach that will deliver the most value and impact
Look at each option in terms of how it will affect your technology, functionality, architecture, risk, and costs. Which option will best help you reach the objectives behind your modernisation initiative? Aim for an approach that can drive maximum impact with minimum effort.
Indonesian private hospital operator Mitra Keluarga (MIKA) had an on-premise data centre that suffered frequent downtimes. The infrastructure could not scale well, and despite acknowledging that there was a need to modernise it, the organisation lacked the necessary in-house IT skills to undertake the digital transformation.
MIKA turned to T-Systems, which proposed a “lift & shift” approach, migrating business-critical applications to the AWS Cloud. T-Systems developed the blueprint and migrated SAP and non-SAP systems to AWS. The solution included a network set-up, a secure access concept using multi-factor authentication, password policies, and centralised identity and access management. The migration was done in just three months and without any disruptions to MIKA’s operations.
Through this modernisation effort, MIKA now has a more reliable, stable, scalable, and always-available infrastructure. It also no longer needs to maintain in-house infrastructure.
Modernising legacy systems is a major undertaking but is a must in today’s volatile business environment. There are a number of different approaches, so careful evaluation and planning is crucial.
If you think it’s time for an update, give your legacy infrastructure an honest look and don’t let them hold you back. But if some components still bring value to the business, consider keeping them around and exploring how best to integrate them with digital technologies.
For organisations looking to modernise their legacy infrastructure through a segmented, secure, and comprehensive approach, there’s T-System’s Future IT Transformation (FITT) Suite.
FIIT is designed to help enterprises digitally transform with minimal risks and zero disruptions to critical business applications. It addresses all architecture layers, enables monolith to microservice transformation through a segmented transition, allows for mainframe migration to the cloud, and uncovers opportunities for “quick wins” for a faster return on investment. Our segmented approach also mitigates risk and minimises outages.
Reach out to us for more information.