CIO OPINION
As tempting as it might be to do away with these legacy technologies , they still contain valuable data and often underpin countless important business functions and processes .
Manuj Desai , CIO , STL
Modernizing the old : Strategies for CIOs to seamlessly integrate legacy technologies into their tech stack
Manuj Desai , CIO , STL , tells Intelligent CIO of taming the ‘ necessary evil ’ of legacy systems and integrating their processes into future tech functions .
As any CIO will confirm , one of the most challenging tasks on their radar is integrating inherited legacy technologies into their company ' s ever-changing modern technology stack .
Legacy systems are often cumbersome , outdated , costly to maintain and frustratingly incompatible with modern technologies .
As tempting as it might be to do away with these legacy technologies , they still contain valuable data and often underpin countless important business functions and processes . That makes them a necessary evil – it ' s down to CIOs and their teams to ensure that this evil is tamed and integrated in the most efficient way possible .
The first step on this journey is all about discovery ; discovery of data , discovery of the company ' s current digital landscape and discovery of business flows and processes and how they interconnect .
The next step is creating a workable roadmap for integration , including timelines for testing and validation to see how a given solution might impact the company ' s overall IT infrastructure .
Finally , and perhaps most importantly , stakeholders must be engaged , and integration options should be carefully considered – whether replacing existing legacy system components or migrating data from an existing system into a new platform .
To begin the journey of integrating legacy systems into a modernized digital infrastructure , the first step is to gain a comprehensive , all-encompassing understanding of the organization ' s digital landscape .
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