Replace legacy applications: need to solve four major problems

The IT departments of the following four enterprises upgraded their legacy systems for different reasons, but the business component involved was the key to upgrading.

Legacy applications in the enterprise have always been the most vexing problem in the IT department. If the "push back" approach is used to deal with these legacy applications, the costs will be very high, and it will be difficult to justify the investment, while also easily leading to business disruption. In addition, a number of legacy software is still used in the accounting general ledger, and is also favored by the sales department. However, these legacy applications can also lead to poor network performance across the enterprise.

In addition to these, there are worse situations. For example, the legacy navigation applications of the transport sector are no doubt the bane of future disasters. As time goes on, the problem becomes more and more serious and difficult to solve.

In the following four cases, each legacy application has its own characteristics. The key is to find a solution with business analysis. IT staff help to find out how these legacy applications are being used, where employees depend on them, and what impact the software failure will have on the enterprise after the interruption of service, especially during the installation of new software and training of users.

"At the heart of these cases is the need to continue to manage the existing assets of these it applications to balance the value of their costs and risks," said Jim Duggan, a market research firm Gartner, who specializes in enterprise IT application research. ”

How should companies balance the costs and risks of these software with the factors that drive them to eventually upgrade? The difference in the solution depends on the specific business requirements and the characteristics of legacy applications.

Case one:

Hudson Bay Company and Lodetel Co.

Problem: Consolidation causes existing ERP (Enterprise resource planning) systems to be discarded.

Solution: Replace the wholesale ERP system to meet the needs of all departments.

Hudson Bay Company was established in 1670, is Canada's oldest chain store. The company also has a number of other brands of chain stores, including specialized kitchen facilities, bedrooms and bathroom appliances supermarket chain Home Outfitters and large integrated shopping chain discount store Zellers. In 2008, the Hudson Bay Company was acquired by NRDC Equity. NRDC Equity also owns the upscale department store chain company Lodetel before the acquisition.

The number of employees in the two large chain stores, which combined about 75000 people and sales of more than 8 billion dollars, faces many challenges. One of the challenges is that the Hudson Bay Company and the Lodetel company have different ERP systems, and the ERP systems of two companies are provided by different vendors respectively. Both of the ERP system can not meet each other's needs.

One of the main uses of the Hudson Bay Company's ERP is to manage delivery to the warehouse.

Hudson Bay Company's new ERP system is helping to manage delivery

The Hudson Bay Company thinks they need a new ERP system covering all the warehouses to replace the old system. Corporate management understands that they want to eliminate old mainframe systems and switch to new blades. One problem with mainframes is finding COBOL programmers to maintain legacy ERP software. With the help of supply chain solution Provider Manhattan Associates, the company upgrades their supply chain management software, and they can know exactly when the goods will arrive at the warehouse after the upgrade.

The benefits of upgrades are process improvements and labor savings. In addition, future mergers and acquisitions will make it easier to integrate existing supply chain software. But Smith also pointed out that the entire project faces several challenges, including the need to integrate the system for the merger of the company and the need to train people to use the new program.

Julie Lockner, a data management analyst for ESG (Enterprise Strategy Group), said the merger of the entire company was complex and particularly complex for retailers, which required a solution to compatibility issues and a clear understanding of how legacy data collections should be maintained after being transferred to the entire corporate system.

If the data is integrated into a single application, the company should initially develop a phase-out plan for data retention and legacy applications to maximize the need to prevent one application from becoming a "source of future trouble", she said.

The Hudson Bay Company faces a series of very tricky questions: legacy applications are still doing most of the work, but they do not meet the needs of newly merged companies, are not able to achieve large-scale use across multiple regions, and as a result of the combination of different corporate cultures, management concerns increase. Duggan points out that the main problem is that complexity leads to high costs and IT departments must prioritize business continuity.

Duggan said: "In mergers and acquisitions, the main factor is the standardization of the business process attitude." Management concerns often lead to multiple sets of procedures in places where there should be only one set of procedures. While it can consolidate multiple sets of programs as needed, it will lead to high operating costs and lower reliability if it is used to disguise the inconsistency that cannot be achieved. ”

Case TWO:

Flexcon Ltd.

Problem: The information platform is too versioned and obsolete.

Solution: Install to the latest version through a series of upgrades.

Flexcon, based in Spencer, Massachusetts, is a custom-made pressure-sensitive film and adhesives manufacturer. The Lotus Notes information platform used by the company has been severely expired.

For the company's collaboration and technical support director Jeremiah Benjamin, this issue has become a perennial problem for weekly technical support. For example, the system does not properly render bulk messages with complex graphics. The company was unable to add additional components for handheld devices because of the additional cost. In addition, they will take a few days to book a conference room, and the size of the number of participants to match.

Benjamin said: "For a long time, we have not carried out any upgrades, we just solve some specific problems." We've missed a lot of upgrades in the past and now we need to update them to the latest version. ”

Benjamin first started tackling a few years ago, when the company's Lotus Notes version did not recognise some of the advanced smartphones, including Android devices and Apple iphones. He also notes that some of the new versions of applications have consolidated issues, such as Microsoft Office and notes.

Due to the omission of multiple upgrades, Flexcon must gradually address these issues. They first upgraded Lotus Notes from version 4.6 to version 6.5. Later, the company upgraded IBM Lotus Notes and Domino servers from 6.5 to version 7 in 2009. Their goal was to complete the upgrade prior to IBM's 2010 suspension of support for version 6.5. Eventually, Flexcon upgraded their Domino server version from 7 to the Notes 8.5 version earlier in 2010. The client upgrade for notes was completed last year. The company has now upgraded all notes versions to the latest version.

Benjamin said he used a variety of methods to successfully complete the upgrade. For example, he conducted a large-scale test and sought advice from experts through Twitter. He said the company purchased IBM's support services but was rarely used during the old version. However, during the upgrade of Lotus Notes 6.5/7 to version 8, he used to call support services frequently for help.

Now, Flexcon's IT team is ready to support new customer devices emerging within the company: When a supervisor brings an ipad or a new smartphone, Benjamin knows Flexcon needs to get servers and clients to support these new devices.

"After that, I decided to upgrade these servers within a few weeks of the release of the new release and keep them up to date." The main benefits are supporting the latest devices, providing the strongest security, keeping the user experience consistent and improving performance. "Benjamin said.

Duggan said the omission of upgrades will lead to increased security risks, resulting in a decline in the value of software. Flexcon's wisdom is that it solves the old version of the problem before it becomes difficult to solve and the upgrade is difficult to carry out.

Due to several missed upgrades, Flexcon also encountered some other problems. "Not only are they unable to support new technology in time, but they also have to pay for the old versions every year," Duggan said. ”

Duggan recommends that the IT department keep their software versions in the latest two versions. He called the strategy "n". In this approach, the software version of most users is the last major upgraded version (N)-that is, not the latest version, but the one before the latest version. Advanced users should detect the latest version (n), the software version of the temporary user should be the most recently released two versions (N-1), so as to gradually keep pace with the mainstream user groups.

Case THREE:

International Association for the Good

Problem: It is difficult to add new CRM functionality to the infrastructure.

Solution: Expand the infrastructure, the ultimate goal is to turn to cloud services.

Jim Finwick know that the problem is now clear. Cio,finwick, as an international association of good Associations, notes that the association's self-developed CRM (Customer relationship Management) system Compass is already very old. Because it was developed based on Sybase PowerBuilder, the association's own CRM is not extensible, there is no open API, and the details of the funders are not available.

Finwick said: "We have a lot of customer relationships, but these customer relationships are mixed up and not sorted by a uniform standard." This leads to a very fragile relationship with customers. We know we need more flexibility and more stability. ”

His fears finally turned into reality. At that time Compass CRM system completely crashed. The crash caused the system to be down for half a day and lost about 500,000 dollars in pledges. Since the International Association of Good Associations is working with 10 regional centres and 25 offices globally to help organize contributions, the association needs a way of working together, without too many software patches and disparate connections. The International Association for the Good has finally decided to adopt a new cloud-based IT infrastructure. The new facility is based on the Microsoft. Net Framework and Neudesic Neuron, where Neudesic Neuron as a bus server to connect different systems.

One of the aims of the association is to identify a one-to-one relationship between funders and subsidized children, with the aim of ensuring that funders are aware of 20 other children who are not supported and in the same situation. This means that children's data should be coordinated with data from donors in different countries, regardless of the country in which they live. Ideally, for example, a British sponsor can quickly get information about a child who needs help, even if the child lives on other continents. It is impossible for a single CRM system to achieve this level of consolidation, and only the cloud is possible.

To date, the International Association for Good has upgraded the Compass database to run on a managed platform. The platform uses a variety of technologies, including Neudesic. Bleum, a shanghai-based IT outsourcing company, added a Web service to Compass CRM to help the association achieve a transition in the short term. In addition, the association plans to upgrade the ERP system to a fully cloud-based system, although Finwick did not disclose when to implement the upgrade plan.

The new CRM system of the International Association for Good will easily link funders to the data of the supported children, as shown in the lower-left corner of the screen

ESG's Lockner says the International Association for Good practices is sensible, but she advises the charity team to continue to introduce users, including employees, churches and other teams approved to use the system. In the cloud architecture process, the association may also need to train users about what to do when the Internet is not working, or to provide a tool to use data offline. She says ensuring that users have exactly the same functionality when using the cloud is as important as the data is locally.

Case FOUR:

Iowa Network Services Ltd.

Problem: Return link monitoring works normally, but does not provide measurement indicators.

Solution: Replace the new software that contains the measurement metrics.

When wireless carriers provide 3G or 4G services, they use a return-link embankment station that connects numerous towers and provides a fibre backbone network. The Iowa Network services company, headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa, has the main business of providing return links for major operators such as At&t and Verizon. The company manages return link services through Aviant Network, including link aggregation and authorized wireless services.

Iowa Network Services Inc. new metrics software allows employees to view a large number of parameters and details

In the early days of wireless access, voice calls only needed a fairly simple connection. But new data services, such as e-mail and the Web, are now causing delays in smartphone services. As a result, the clients of the Iowa Network services company return link ask the company for more detailed monitoring so they can form a report on the quality of the service.

"It takes a lot of money to add performance metrics," said Leon Hofer, vice president of network operations at Iowa Network Services. The existing legacy system has been in use for 10 years, and we have not set up metrics in the original system. It makes sense to upgrade the entire system, taking into account customer needs and the age of old applications. ”

Like any upgrade, the Iowa Network services company has many unexpected advantages through upgrades, as well as a number of unforeseen challenges. The new system, developed by the Monolith Software company, provides more detailed data and a better interface, but the new system does not always provide all the data in a concise interface like aviant. (Users are able to browse the summaries provided in a chart format.) )

Leon Hofer, vice president of network operations at Iowa Network Services, said the upgrade of the old return link system required a lot of money, so the company decided to replace it with a new software suite.

When the measurement exceeds the set rate threshold, the new feature will alert the Iowa Network Service staff by SMS or email. However, Hofer says the use of these new features requires training and new processes for staff.

On the other hand, before upgrading, technical maintainers must track specific network devices, open fault orders, and then correlate data from different sources. The upgraded system can now collect this data automatically, and technicians can get the data through the built-in reports.

Gartner analyst Duggan suggests that when business customers need some special features--in this case, monitoring, upgrading is the easiest way. "When you think about this approach, adding new functionality to your business needs as a product requirement will increase your chances of increasing your business and your revenue," he said. ”

Finally, each legacy application is a complex it challenge that involves analyzing business processes, calculating upgrade costs, training, and device updates. As Duggan says, once the application affects production, they are immediately labeled as "old". In many ways, this means that the IT department should begin to prepare for upgrading, replacing, or outsourcing these applications before they are fully deployed.

(Responsible editor: admin)