Today’s legacy computer systems are the product of years of investment of both intellectual and financial capital. They embody the wisdom and methods of the organizations they serve. But these systems are increasingly unable to provide support for new products and sales channels which businesses need to compete.
Large-scale replacement of systems is expensive, risky and can take many years to implement fully; the returns are usually so poor that the replacement projects fail at the first financial hurdle. Even those which start have a failure rate of over 70%. Finally, in many, if not most organizations, the old systems are not actually retired, so that two systems are run in parallel with a resulting increase in operating costs.

So it is often with some envy that established organisations look upon newcomers into their market with their ‘green field’ site operations and a distinct lack of historical processing
baggage.

At NaMax, we have devised an approach which:

• Preserves and enhances existing investment in software, hardware and corporate skills
• Encourages reuse of software—new products are expected to use existing software components lowering the cost of projects
• Engenders rapid, low-cost development and deployment of new and old products through new and existing channels
• Reduces the time to market for new and modified products from a typical 12-18 months to 3-5 months
• Uses lower cost hardware and software and requires fewer staff to support the back office systems
• Recognises that today’s requirements may not be tomorrow’s and avoids the straight-jacket of long term development commitments
• Allows finance, IT and sales to work as partners to focus on the real needs of the business: enhanced revenues and reduced costs
  

And if you decide to move away from the old system, then this approach allows the replacement to be done gradually and with much lower risk.

Legacy management - Flash movie