When it comes to business operations, it’s easy to get comfortable in the status quo. Change seems daunting, especially in the context of legacy software. But often, just because a relationship is comfortable, doesn’t mean it’s what’s best for your enterprise in the long term. Here are a few reasons why it may be time to break up with your legacy system:
1. Security Issues
Any enterprise worth its salt takes security seriously. Outdated software is one of the best ways hackers exploit their victims. There are thousands of industrial malware programs designed to target your systems in order to harvest you and your customers’ data, including sensitive financial information. Many malware programs can lurk for months (even years) harvesting information undetected. Here are several examples of how attackers focus on legacy gaps alone.
2. Reduced Performance
In many cases, company productivity can only be as good as our software performance. Minutes or hours of downtime can cause organizations to lose thousands, sometimes millions of dollars. What’s more, outdated software can cause delays, deflated morale, and confusion among employees. The time and energy saved by working with modernized software solutions allows your company to perform at its best with reduced downtime.
3. Updates and Software Compatibility
Many companies find themselves between a rock and a hard place with their legacy systems. Some software vendors go out of business or pivot their priorities, so they are no longer releasing updates to their systems. In some scenarios, vendors change their focus and stop supporting features or compatibility with programs that they no longer find profitable. Being deprioritized by your vendor is never good news, so start looking for systems that are worth your money.
4. Losing Money on Patches and Maintenance
If you have been throwing away money on fixes that shouldn’t have been an issue in the first place, that’s also a serious red flag. When companies spend thousands of dollars on patches and unnecessary workarounds, it adds up over time. The cost of maintaining legacy software ends up costing them much more in the long run than if they invested in modernization.
5. Falling Behind Competitors
Whether we like it or not, software is the fastest-moving industry in the world. Only the most elite competitors invest their resources into modernized software systems. When organizations invest in high-performance systems and applications, they improve the user experience of everyone involved. When you use the right software systems, it helps keep your employees productive and your customers happy.
Published on Java Code Geeks with permission by Simon Martinelli, partner at our JCG program. See the original article here: Five Ways to Tell It’s Time to Break Up with Your Legacy System Opinions expressed by Java Code Geeks contributors are their own. |
