Using old software technologies can be often frustrating, ineffective, time consuming and expensive. IT Departments in all kind of industries (Energy and Water Utility, Telecom, Insurance, Healthcare, Distribution, Manufacturing, Banking etc.) are struggling to meet the growing expectations of their company’s customers while using legacy tools. Often the employees are so busy trying to make everything work, that they don’t even take a minute to hear out the experts which are just trying to tell them that there are already solutions which can not only solve all of their problems, but also raise effectiveness at work with a fast return on investments.
What Is Legacy Exactly?
According to Webopedia: “in computing terms, the word legacy is used to describe outdated or obsolete technology and equipment that is still being used by an individual or organization. Legacy implies that the system is out of date or in need of replacement, however it may be in good working order so the business or individual owner does not want to upgrade or update the equipment. Typically software vendor or manufacturer support is not available for legacy systems and applications.” In other words, legacy software products are system solutions which were produced long time ago, are no longer updated or supported by the developer. There are different reasons for a software to become legacy. For example, a software can become legacy if it was bought by another entity and they decided to throw it out. Often there still remain some third parties on the market, which still offer support for these type of software solutions, but their support and software upgrade is very expensive, don’t offer the whole set of innovative tools that is on the market and that is possibly used by your competitors to meet the customer’s needs. And what is most important – even their support won’t last forever.
75% Of Organisations With Legacy Systems Say That Cost Drives Them To Keep Outdated Systems
What most of these organisations don’t know is that modern solutions are designed as cross platforms and can be installed on any platform. They don’t require costly hardware. Innovative solutions are mostly web-based and can be installed on-premise and vendor hosted.
Fear Of The Unknown Makes Companies Miss Out On Opportunities
When you work with a software solution on a daily base, it isn’t always easy to tell when exactly this tool, that was reliable for a very long time, begins to fail.
There comes a time when the sentence “yes, it always does that” and “oh, no, not that again” is said too many times. Sometimes older solutions start loading too long, or crash in the most important and unexpected moment.
But you still don’t even think about switching the system. You stick to the way things work in your workplace, because these old software products made everything happen for a very long time. Another reason for staying with the way things are, is the fear of new technologies. Also, switching to a totally different system, migrating data and setting up the whole environment is time-consuming. And that’s fair enough, because we’re all humans. But does it always have to be this hard?
There Is Still Hope
Good news: it doesn’t have to be this way. Switching and upgrading solutions needs to be done on a regular base, just like going to a dentist. If you wait too long with a healing of a bad tooth, it’s not only going to be more expensive, but also more painful to deal with.
In our case, with each missed upgrade cycle, it becomes much harder and more expensive to roll out the next one, until the system is so deep in technical debt that there’s no way out and you need to start over from the very beginning. In our next post the Ecodocx team of experts, which has more than 10 years of experience in enterprise development, will explain you how to spot the early warning signs before it’s not too late. So please make sure to subscribe, or check back in with us so that you don’t miss anything important. Make sure to check back soon and reach out to us so that we can get you started with your Customer Communications Management and Enterprise Content Management.