In the ever-changing and continuously evolving world of technology, many IT investments fail to deliver the value they promised, as technological features which were considered “nice to have” become a “must have” within a short span of time. Legacy and mainframe systems that have been serving organizations for years may no longer support future growth. In order to sustain and grow profitably in today’s dynamic environment, the management of such organizations is often advised to go for modernization.
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Anticipated returns from a modernization project
1. Financial Gain:
It is the most important driving factor for any modernization project. Financial gain can be in terms of increased productivity or revenue. Increased productivity implies more value in terms of services provided by the investment in IT. These may include- increased automated tasks; integration of modern and legacy technologies and higher output of services or goods from the organization to name a few.
2. Operational Gain:
Legacy systems have higher operational costs than new advanced systems. Modernization project should be able to reduce the operational costs by increasing developer productivity, ensuring higher uptime and reducing turnaround times for maintenance. The modernized enterprise IT should be able to adapt to changes in organizational structure, legislation or offerings. It should also be able to tackle the problem of diminishing skill base in legacy technology.
3.Technical Gain:
The project should bring the organizations IT abreast with trending and upcoming disruptive technologies. The updated system should be able to support new functionalities/ applications which the enterprise might want to add in the future thereby enhancing flexibility and quicker response time to market needs.
Post completion of a Modernization project it is advised to assess the project on above mentioned three fronts. The success can be evaluated based on metrics like TCO and ROI which are explained in the following segment.
Parameters defining success of Modernization project
- Reduction in TCO:
TCO (Total cost of ownership) should be calculated twice in order to assess the project. First should be before modernization i.e. TCO of existing IT environment and second should be after the project completion. To calculate the actual TCO all the factors should be considered like
- Hardware and software purchase cost (application servers, databases, storage devices, networking equipment , software licenses etc)
- Hardware and software maintenance cost
- Human resources (IT staffs, technicians and consultants) • Office floor space occupied
- Power consumption and data connection costs
- Duration of Project:
The ROI of modernization projects should be calculated in terms of time required by the company to recover the cost of project through reduction in TCO. This implies the shorter the duration of project, the earlier you start reaping the benefits.
So, if ROI of a project is termed as one year, then it means the cost of project is equivalent to reduction in TCO of one year. After one year the project cost is added to the company’s profits.
- Sustainability of Project:
The modernization project (not to be confused with upgrades) should not be followed by a similar project for at least next 10-15 years. However, this duration may vary from organization to organization. Some companies with technology-based offerings might require more frequent updates than others; hence it’s debatable but can’t be neglected.
Hence it may be noted that any modernization project is driven by multiple factors like operational/technical/financial issues and limitations. Before investing in any project, the management should have a fair idea of the returns which will help the organization in further growth.
Why migrate when you can modernize 4GL logics (Draft to add in Informix-4GL to Genero link)
The present global market scenario are no doubt challenging – they are becoming more dynamic each day, and at the same time there are stricter budget constraints that companies are implementing to ensure operational efficiency and maintain competence. Dynamic markets further call for, quicker decision making, smarter reporting and staying up to date with the current technology. In such a scenario, many large corporations are forced to walk a tight rope- faced with the challenges posed by legacy critical applications, which lie at the very heart of their business process.
To solve the impeding problem at hand, many users have either opted for, or are in process of considering a reliable migration option. But before concluding with the migration solution, one needs to truly answer one critical question, “Do I need to migrate, or can my legacy applications be converted to a modernized environment using the existing 4GL logic and a database built over decades?”
Business processes are rarely static. They are subject to prevailing market and economic conditions of the particular business domain. They undergo different phases in their life cycle. First they are created, then they mature and then finally they either evolve or become obsolete. In the continuously evolving IT world, the applications handling business processes have to catch up with the latest technological trends to support the enterprise. This ensures a quicker and accurate decision-making as well as keeps the critical application competent.
Enterprise applications and platforms are mere reflections of the business processes on IT infrastructure. They also have a similar life cycle but are much short lived. Most enterprises have a variety of platforms that span decades of IT innovation. According to a research done by a major global IT firm, all business applications are between 5 and 20 years old. Within this time period newer technologies appear and compatibility issues are faced within the enterprise.
As a result, there are problems in integrating business logic and applications written in legacy systems with other modern applications and languages. Organizations seeking flexibility and inter-compatibility of code written in multiple languages across diverse location had only one option of rewriting/migrating to a newer platform.
To solve such issues, consultants often prefer modernizing over migrating. Today a lot of organizations are providing modernizing solutions to enterprises looking for an overhaul. A few examples are Microsoft Application Platform extending its capabilities for COBOL and 4J’s Genero Suite as one stop shop for all Informix 4GL modernizing solutions.
