How to Deal with Legacy Systems While Digitally Transforming Your Business

One of the biggest hurdles for businesses in this digital transformation is their reliance on legacy systems. A large number of enterprises are somewhat hard-coded into the technology investments they made in the past. Many of these traditional systems handle critical businesses process and are quite difficult to replace. So, how can a business deal with legacy systems during a digital transformation?

Here are some tips that can ease things up:

While many conventional devices are complex and need much maintenance, there remain good reasons why a business should not replace the entire system at once. Many businesses have already spent a great deal of money on these systems, and much effort has gone into training the staff.

Replacing these systems with an entirely new stack would mean a heavy financial burden on the company, and a considerable amount of time and efforts would be spent on training the staff again. So, instead of replacing the entire system at a stretch, a business should try to look for ways to integrate the legacy systems with the new digital solutions, especially when the legacy systems meet your current requirements.

Most businesses view data migration between legacy systems and modern systems as a process that will only be executed once. As a result, developers create solutions with a lot of manual actions as they believe that the measures would also be a one-time activity. However, such an approach may not always be the right one.

For instance, data migration is often split into several waves for large businesses. In such cases, the manual actions would have to be repeated multiple times. So, even if you believe that data migration would be a one-time process, it is better to look for automated migration solutions as manual solutions can be time-consuming.

With micro-services now encapsulating business solutions, organisations need to replace the traditionally used enterprise services. What they need is an event-driven digital backbone created with the help of technologies such as Apache Kafka.

These leading-edge backbones make it easier for businesses to switch to newer solutions with business logic exposed to the legacy systems. Such modern micro-services are flexible enough to implement changes in the business process when a company is trying to migrate to digital solutions.

It is easy for businesses to lose track of their technology estate, which grows consistently over time. For successful digital transformation, manage the technology portfolio just like you manage your products.

Create a portfolio of your technology assets and plot the larger systems along with their associated risks and their expected lifetime. The portfolio should help you know the current contribution of the system to your business. Combined with regular system checks, this portfolio gives a deeper understanding of the potential problem areas related to the system you currently use.

Increasing number of businesses rely on SaaS for their legacy system migration. The software delivery model is suitable for organisations of every size and is wildly popular for the benefits it offers.

While the reduced cost of IT support is the biggest highlight of this model, it offers several other valuable benefits. Some of the most important ones include affordability, quicker deployment, work portability and zero compatibility issues.

Even if a business is trying to transform itself digitally, the modern systems of today are bound to turn into legacy systems of tomorrow. Rather than focusing on the digital modes, businesses should try to turn themselves into organisations that are fluid enough to achieve local as well as international business outcomes.

There are now solutions that can help businesses make this transformation smooth and time-efficient. SmartOffice from Tata Tele Business Services is an excellent way to access data, voice, storage and apps through a single solution. The managed service is future-proof and cost-efficient and offers reliable bandwidth, making it an excellent choice for any modern business setting up a new branch or office.