Overcoming Legacy IT Challenges: 6 Key Elements and Best Practices

In IT, a legacy system is outdated technology that’s still being used by a business. Legacy systems often work for years, albeit less efficiently and without the latest upgrades and updates. These systems are often essential pieces of infrastructure, but maintaining them comes at a steep price. They are usually highly complex and weren't designed to interface well with other pieces of technology. Consequently, many enterprises end up with a multilayered architecture of middleware and connectors designed to enable them to build on top of core technology, which was designed in a different era, to solve a different set of challenges.

The biggest challenge businesses face with the lack of the right technology is losing customers and market share. Technology modernization will bring significant Unique Selling Propositions to your company’s products and services. You can offer features that your competitors lack to satisfy the customer needs and expectations. The more you delay, the more expensive and riskier it gets.

With IT modernization, you can access better management, business flow, and efficient operational processes in real-time. IT modernization is defined differently across businesses, industries, and personas. Ultimately though, it means:

• • leveraging technology to meet expanding business goals
  • aligning IT and business units to compete in today’s digital economy
  • and digitizing & improving the customer experience to improve service levels and create market differentiation

When it comes time to modernize your IT infrastructure, you may not know where to begin. You should be looking at many different factors when finding the perfect technology fit for your specific business. These multiple factors and challenges can feel overwhelming. Before replacing, updating or extending your legacy IT foundation, look to these 6 Key Elements and Best Practices to overcome challenges and plan accordingly for your specific situation.

1. Partner with depth of bench providers - Mobile and cloud are integrated experiences, making it vital to work with solution partners who have ecosystem (Software-as-a-Service) breadth. Be sure to know what they offer, as well as their technical depth. 

2. Know your device lifecycles - Proactively manage tech refresh cycles to maximize your system's performance and ensure business continuity. 

3. Shadow transition costs - Plan meticulously. Detailed planning can mitigate potential delays and scope creep that drive up costs. 

4. Get granular in understanding your costs per user - User and data access needs vary, so don't use a one-size-fits-all approach to balance productivity and security. 

5. Plan for a borderless operating environment - With the rapid and steady rise of mobility in the workplace, a borderless operating environment is becoming the norm. Plan and protect accordingly with a zero-trust security architecture that includes leading identity and access management (IAM) initiatives. 

6. Stop front end blinders from leading to back-end frustration - Before falling in love with a potential technology purchase. consider its operations and maintenance support alongside your organization's skill set. 

Migrating your legacy system and applications doesn’t have to be a headache. Our team will assess your existing infrastructure and ease you into new systems that improve efficiency and transform how you do business. Contact us today to kickstart your enterprise’s IT modernization.