Retiring legacy systems
Issues with modernization
As organizations modernize to meet computing demands, they face
enormous challenges when it comes the topic of retiring old computer
systems and applications. Consigning old applications or
platforms to the backburner in favor of newer, safer, more stable,
and more user-friendly systems is never as easy as it sounds.
the problem is more pronounced when the issues of regulatory
compliance, budget, and time requirements are taken into
consideration.
Maintaining for record Retention
How many of you are still maintaining an old computer system
somewhere in your operation that is running an application critical
to your business record retention requirements? You are
not alone if you have such a system. You might think that just
because you fully depreciated the hardware long ago, your
system is "free." Think again, there are real and hidden
support costs to maintaining legacy hardware and software systems.
Not only are there hardware support costs to consider, if
you can even find replacement parts, a more critical and costly
problem is supporting legacy software and applications. Is the
software's author still available to support it? If not, do
you have enough documentation to support it now or in the future?
Are you being held hostage by a former vendor who extorts money from
the company every time they're needed to run reports for their old
accounting system. How long will you be still stuck with these
exorbitant licensing and maintenance rates?
Legacy IT Considerations
Is it time for you to look at the
sustainability of your legacy IT systems? Keeping old systems
running can be very costly in terms of potential business risk and
maintenance expense.
Here's a checklist of things to
consider when reviewing your business's legacy IT issues:
Is annual support less than the system replacement costs for both
hardware and software?
If the
current system support person were hit by a bus tomorrow, would you
still be in business?
Can you
easily find people with the skills to maintain either your hardware
or software applications?
Does the
original manufacturer still have replacement parts for your hardware
or are you using
hard-to-find
third-party resources for parts?
Is
the original vendor still in business and actively supporting your
version of the system?
If you answered "no" to some of these questions, then you
probably should be on the lookout for a cost effective solution
which will allow retiring of your legacy systems before they cause
serious harm to your business.
What we can do for you
We convert data into a formatted documents and reports that can
be retrieved and viewed on/with industry standard hardware and
software platforms.
We maintain documents and reports that
satisfy expected inquiry needs.
We work to satisfy your
legal, regulatory, and governance requirements.
We follow
auditor guidelines for data transformation and chain of custody.
We addresses data validation challenges because original
documents and reports are read-only.
We work to eliminate
legal repercussions associated with lost or invalidated data.
We help plan a retention policy by reviewing requirements for
organizational and individual departments.
Where necessary we
can associate updated documents and reports with legacy items.
Benefits
The company and the IT services department have one less
proprietary platform to support.
Hardware / Software
operational and maintenance costs are eliminated.
Facilities
overhead is reduced by eliminating redundant paper files.
Productivity is improved with easier access to legacy data using
industry standard desktop software.
Eliminates risks with
access security to sensitive customer or employee information.