Dealing with legacy systems is the Achilles’ Heel of digital transformation. The legacy system is often the main core of a company, used by the finance, purchasing, sales, and logistics department. Thus, they are a key system for businesses. The problem starts with the fact that many companies today are outdated with technology investments of the past – the so-called legacy systems – a code written ages ago that contain important data.

Despite the advancement of technology and the well-known benefits of using modern software, many companies still choose not to upgrade their software without being aware of the threats this entails for network security. All systems age, and over the years they can end up causing a company more problems than benefits. With the ongoing evolution of technology, comes the evolution of companies. And to make significant changes within a business, it is vital to transform its legacy software.

The key legacy software problems

Security: Using outdated legacy software can cause additional cybersecurity issues since it may be incapable of protecting against current threats. There is also a high failure rate of the system, and the company runs the risk of a total crush of the system eventually.

Cost-effectiveness: The use of legacy software by a company has several hidden costs. These include maintaining the system and finding employees who not only have knowledge and expertise of the systems but also who want to work with legacy software. Many companies avoid doing the necessary changes to ensure good software development because of its high costs.

Maintenance problems: Due to a general lack of understanding of the system and lack of resources, the maintenance of legacy software becomes more difficult over time. If the company has a worker who knows the system for years, the maintenance still works. The problem only begins when it starts to get difficult to find qualified employees who work with archaic software.

Compatibility with new systems: The data stored in outdated systems cannot be simply sent to another software, so over time it becomes more difficult and costly to implement changes or migrate it to a completely new system. As a result, it prejudices the increase of the company’s competitiveness in the market.

How to deal with legacy systems?

There are several proven strategies to upgrade legacy systems: you can do a complete transformation or replacement of the system, a reconstruction, or you can opt to rewrite the entire system.

Complete transformation/replacement: In this case, the entire system is replaced with the latest technology, but it can be a risky effort. It is the best solution only when the current system is built upon an archaic code that contains many bugs or errors, or when the performance and security are down. The developers build everything from scratch because it is not justifiable to fix the current code. Replacing the whole system is an opportunity to improve the technology used but it requires a larger financial outlay.

Reconstruction: This method takes more time, but often requires less money. It is the process of rewriting the old code in small steps that are easy to control and test until it gradually replaces the entire archaic system. The big advantage of this process is that the system’s functionality is not affected, and the company can continue performing its processes as normal. Code reconstruction can provide better quality and a modern code whose implementation does not affect the current functioning of the system in any way.

Rewriting the system: Rewriting the code, unlike its reconstruction, does not require “touching” the old code. It is the process of writing a new system practically from scratch. However, once again, it is a process that requires time and only makes sense if the legacy system is small. Otherwise, it is recommended to rewrite only some fragments of the system that constantly cause bugs or that are developed for new business purposes.

Any system will eventually grow old and become legacy software if it is not taken care of. Every software system, even the ones that have just undergone reconstruction or a rewriting, must be regularly looked after and tested to maintain the quality of the code. If a company fails on that, in a few years it will generate a huge technological debt again and it will be forced to invest in an entirely new system.

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