What’s Happening in Legacy Modernization?

Ana AndradeMorphis Clients, Morphis In the NewsLeave a Comment

The discussion is hotting up around the topic of legacy system modernization a.k.a. application modernization a.k.a. many other things. For a brief discussion on the options available for application modernization please check out our recent post on 15 tips for the ISV needing to modernize. For a more in-depth analysis, check out our white paper on breaking the shackles of legacy systems.

This post aggregates some of the more interesting recent stories in the press related to application modernization.

Firstly, in the Federal space, Rep. Will Hurd (Chairman of a House panel with oversight of federal IT issues) pushed back on the White House application for a $3.1B fund for IT Modernization claiming that a focus on data center consolidation would be a better use of funds. Tell that to the OPM and the many innocent civilians whose data was compromised by security loopholes arising from legacy systems.

Miami-Dade County is leading the way in legacy modernization and showing what can be achieved by enlightened leadership taking action to address the issue.

In the private sector, 81% of CIOs believe legacy systems are having a negative impact on business and only 4% of banks plan to change legacy core banking systems while banking failures continue to occur (primarily because of legacy systems). If you haven’t read it, SWIFT is the latest to suffer significant systems failure, this time leading to thieves stealing $81M from the Bangladesh Bank.

To summarize that last paragraph: Everyone understands the negative impact of legacy systems, nobody plans to change (at least in the Banking sector) and thieves continue to steal our money. I say “our” money because, of course, one way or another those losses are coming back to us (the consumer) through higher fees and/or higher insurance premiums and/or lower 401K/pension funds.

Of course, it’s not just Federal and Banking that are dazzled by the headlights of the oncoming car, Healthcare IT Leaders are struggling to innovate because of the burden of legacy systems and protecting data.

And the learnings are? Per our quote in the Miami-Dade County article, “The most important thing is that this particular problem gets portrayed as being unsolvable. It’s a difficult challenge, but it’s not unsolvable. When I see these stories, you can see that it can be done. Miami-Dade County should be applauded for working through this.” Start. Get going. Do something. The alternative is not good, someone will come and eat your lunch. Perhaps Atom Bank will be the touchpaper that disrupts the Banking sector? They’re certainly off to a good start.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *