Refurbishing Legacy Systems: An effective Approach to Maintenance

In its effort to support the business need for more information to be available in less time, the IS department has implemented a variety of proprietary technologies, developed new systems, and added capabilities to existing ones. The amount of systems integration, development, and maintenance activity required to satisfy these demands has left IS with little time to properly care for the base of old and rapidly aging systems. These legacy systems are often in a state of disrepair, suffering from the use of outmoded technologies and years of changes at the hands of different IS personnel who used different programming styles and formats. For many companies, these systems have been left to age with few (if any) improvements to the program structure, complexity, or hardware and software technologies.