Bridging The Gap: Managing Legacy Transformation

With new technologies being adopted all too often and if not adopted, certainly finding a place on every CIO’s wishlist, how does one bridge the gap between the old and the new? Kamlesh Bhatia, principal research analyst, Gartner, speaks to Biztech2.0 on how organisations can leverage old technologies while adopting new ones.

What is the scenario related to legacy architecture in India?

There is hardly any legacy in India as compared to other mature markets, partially because India got into automation and adoption of IT much later than western countries. In that respect, there isn’t a whole lot of legacy in enterprises within India. What we can consider as legacy has been homegrown by these enterprises, probably things like what they would’ve done in-house for product development may fit this bill. Typically, organisations in India don’t have hardware or systems, which can be termed as legacy. But they have technology, which is legacy. The way technology matures always poses a challenge during upgradation.

From that perspective, there is some legacy. When the systems in India were being built, there was no maturity in the processes or in the way the systems were designed. These systems were basically built on an ad hoc basis or using extremely limited skill sets. The problem occurs when these systems are upgraded to the next level. How do you manage system changes? The incremental cost of change management is very high. There is also the problem of finding the right skill set to support the systems.

Given that most resources have moved on to a newer technology, newer architecture and a base of creating new systems, it is a challenge to support homegrown systems. In most cases, people who have built these systems have also moved on from these companies. As they were built in an ad hoc way or not built using proper change management and lifecycle management processes (there is hardly any documentation for these systems), these systems are gradually starting to show their age.

How do you see CIOs juggling old and new technologies? Do they prefer to rip and replace them or optimise the old stuff?

There are two ways to do this in my view. One way is to introduce disciplined change management in the organisation. Thus, organisations systematically move from homegrown architecture to packet or custom solutions. There has to be a progression path for these old systems, so rip and replace is never done in most cases. It is always an incremental sort of an improvement that takes place. Partly, due to the investment that has already been made into these systems and also because these systems are like old war horses. They manage a lot of business for these companies. At the same time, most of these companies prefer to go in for an incremental change process that replaces these systems step by step.

The other way works around SOA where one makes use of some of the old capabilities and wraps them around SOA to reuse some of the functionalities offered by the old systems. That way one increases the lives of these systems as well as the value that they can offer and integrates the same with the new architecture being built into the organisation.

What are the other issues related to legacy that CIOs are facing?

The biggest challenge lies in change management. How to introduce agility in the enterprise is a big challenge with these old systems. If an organisation wants to launch a new product or service or bring in change in the way of working, it is extremely difficult with these old systems. The time it takes to implement change in these systems is very high. The second challenge is how to merge the old with the new architecture. The third challenge revolves around skill sets for old systems. There is very little in terms of quality in these systems and very little documentation. So how do you upgrade them to the next level and still maintain them is the question before CIOs.

What is the solution here?

The solution here is a step-by-step migration process of these old systems into the new architecture typically driven by SOA using Web 2.0 paradigms. At the same time, organisations should not invest in upgrading them in-house; instead they should move to a packaged solution (custom off-the-shelf) approach.

Is SOA the only answer to bridging this gap?

SOA is the means to achieve it. What is really important for any form of change in an enterprise is how the executive management of the company perceives the change. Any organisation undergoing any IT transformation should have a champion, who can drive it from the executive level. Clear strategy and a vision to achieve this transformation is a must. There should be effective representation at the board level by the person, who is driving this. In most cases, it is the CIO. A clear vision to drive the capability is a must.

What role do these old technologies really play in an organisation and what is going to be their future?

These solutions have been around for ages. They have established a way of working within the enterprise. Everything associated with the change has to be done in terms of preparing internal people for change and convincing them that the way to really go about this is to accept the change and take it forward. Most of the information stored in old systems is very valuable. Some of the new technologies that enterprises bring in should have the ability to leverage this information to further the business.