Unlocking business-critical IP is a pressing issue for many companies. Decades of custom coding, multiple generations of programmers, and multiple development paradigms have resulted in large legacy code bases, non-relational storage, proprietary technologies, and a lack of functional decomposition. This has led to high costs, inflexible systems, inaccessible data, and a range of risks, including technology de-support, business continuity, and security risks.
The problem is further exacerbated by the current and expected near-term skills retirement of people who know these legacy technologies. When they retire, so does the knowledge about these systems.
To address this challenge, companies need to move towards a desired, optimized target state based on modern principles. This includes finding the right balance of buy vs build, being cloud-centric, cost-effective, agile, and composable. It requires a state of continuous modernization for both the applications and the supporting infrastructure.
There are several risks associated with not modernizing legacy systems, including:
- High cost: Proprietary technologies can be expensive to maintain due to their monopoly status.
- Inflexible systems: Legacy systems can be difficult to change, making it challenging to adapt to new business requirements.
- Inaccessible data: Data stored in legacy systems may be difficult to access and integrate with modern systems.
- Technology de-support risks: Legacy technologies may no longer be supported by their vendors, increasing the risk of system failure.
- Business continuity risks: The potential for system failure increases as legacy systems age, increasing the risk of business disruption.
- Security risks: Legacy systems may not be able to keep up with modern security threats, increasing the risk of data breaches and cyber-attacks.
Building the route to the optimized state is a complex task that requires taking into account a range of factors, including priorities, prerequisites, objectives, issues, resources, funding, constraints, and ongoing and planned activities. It requires experience and expertise, as well as the use of deterministic and probabilistic tools.
Together with our partners, we have the experience, expertise, and tools to help companies navigate the legacy modernization challenge. Our approach focuses on prioritizing short, medium, and long-term objectives based on your priorities. Whether you need to remediate tech debt or forward engineer into SaaS, we have the solutions and the know-how to help you succeed.
Microsoft's approach to mainframe transformation includes an extensive partner ecosystem. The company leads with the right solution for every workload, each time, every time. The solutions are co-engineered and optimized for Azure.
If you would like to learn more about this topic, or discuss your ideas, please contact the Microsoft team at mainframetransformed@microsoft.com.