The path to modernization of historical Systems

Note: copyright of this ArticleECFAnd HP.

 

The history of informatization of Chinese enterprises has been in China for more than 30 years. For individuals, it is regarded as "Thirty-thirty-Thirty-one". For the information field, many CIOs are also faced with the troubles of many adults. Among these troubles, there is a very important thing: a system launched 5 or 10 years ago (also called a historical system ), the question of how to continue to use it today.

Anyone who works in technology knows that there is a "post-development advantage" in technology, that is, the systems developed later, the more likely they are to use newer technologies, often, such systems can meet business requirements and have better adaptability to the current complex business environment. But do we need to take a closer look at the old system that we called the historical system 10 years ago?

Many people think that a system over 10 years can directly send it to the garbage. just create a new system. If the problem is so simple, let's look at a scenario where more than 2000 users, more than 50 teams are maintaining historical data that exceeds TB, it involves all the core business links of the enterprise and supports 5 billion of the enterprise's sales in a year. Do you dare to simply say that it is directly sent to the garbage disposal system?

At this time, CIOs need to have extraordinary IT planning capabilities. First, they should evaluate the existing system and combine the current business status and future development plans of the enterprise, planning a reasonable life cycle for this system, maybe this system is really not suitable to retire immediately, maybe this system can take 5 to 10 years for full maintenance, this depends on many complex factors. But one thing is certain. Without a complete backup plan, the immediate suspension of this system would be disastrous, of course, we can also find time to talk about how to switch between the old and new systems.

What we are concerned about now is: how can we reuse the history system for 5-10 years? In fact, at this time, we can consider using some modern technology to transform the historical system. We can think about the following issues:

1. Identify which parts of the history system can be retained and how long the expected use cycle will be;

2. Can a retained part of a history system be transformed using some new technologies (or even not a new technology), such as the CS software architecture or Web Services technology, of course, if SOA and other technologies can be used, the opportunity is needed;

3. Which systems should be replaced by new ones? How long will it take for a new system to be used? At the same time, we need to consider how the new system can be integrated with the old system, this requires clear thinking in advance;

4. The risks of launching a new system also need to be fully considered, because it also involves how to mount old data in the new system. If this problem cannot be solved, this means that the company's core assets-data and information will be separated by the new and old systems, which is likely to outshine the loss.

 

The historical system is at the crossroads of survival or not, and CIOs will make new choices again. This time, we may choose enough external intelligence to help us solve this problem.

 

Note: copyright of this ArticleECFAnd HP.