While most organizations understand the importance of technology to meet their strategic goals, they often overlook the cumulative costs of technical debt in the form of lost opportunities and wasted resources. According to McKinsey & Company research, 30 percent of CIOs surveyed believe 20 percent of their budget for new products is diverted to resolving issues related to technical debt.
Technical debt is often regarded as the cost of shortcuts taken during software development, but in the context of legacy business applications, it also refers to wasting money on something incapable of resolving your challenges. In an age when data security, privacy, and ownership have become increasingly important to business success, understanding, and eliminating legacy application technical debt should be a top priority.
Here are some common signs of legacy application technical debt that negatively impact your ability to manage data efficiently and effectively:
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1. Maintaining Duplicate System(s)
Your organization switched to a more modern, robust business application that better meets its needs, but continues to operate the legacy application simply to provide access to its historical data.
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2. Outdated Technology
Your legacy application is built on outdated technology, such as unsupported hardware or software, which makes it difficult to maintain and patch. Legacy systems have more known vulnerabilities, posing significant data security risks..png?width=700&height=250&name=The%20Importance%20of%20Managing%20Technical%20Debt%20%20(700%20x%20250%20px).png)
3. Difficulty Providing Support
Requires significant time and effort to resolve user and system issues.
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4. High Maintenance Costs
Modifying and maintaining the application has become increasingly difficult, requiring significant time and resources to keep running.
With increasing regulatory, customer, and employee focus on how organizations manage their data and its importance to the success of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), organizations can no longer afford to keep their critical and inactive data trapped and unmanaged in legacy applications. Archive360’s Unified Data Governance platform enables organizations to manage their critical and inactive data more efficiently and cost-effectively, retire their legacy applications and associated technical debt. This not only saves legacy application maintenance and support costs, but reduces data security risks, improves litigation preparedness, reduces data discovery costs, and frees up resources (financial, personnel, and data) to focus on value-added activities. Archive360 has worked with organizations that decommissioned systems, yet continued to operate, tens of legacy applications per year simply to meet regulatory retention requirements. [read this case study where a top bank saved $40 million by decommissioning] By archiving data to Archive360’s Unified Data Governance platform, those organizations have saved millions in legacy application operating costs alone. For more information on structured data archiving for application retirement, read our latest whitepaper.
Your legacy application is built on outdated technology, such as unsupported hardware or software, which makes it difficult to maintain and poses significant data security risks.
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WHITEPAPER
Structured Data Archiving for Application Retirement
A Guide to Structured Data Archiving and Decommissioning your Legacy Applications
In this white paper you will learn:
- The key drivers for retiring legacy applications
- Important considerations and decisions to address when archiving your organization's structured data
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Jim is the Director of Product Marketing at Archive360 and has over 24 years of experience with multinational corporations and technology start-ups in the financial services, pharmaceutical, and business services industries. His expertise includes over 10 years in archiving, data governance, risk, and compliance, making him a seasoned professional in these critical areas.
