Analysis: The CIO's legacy IT nightmare

Making the best use of legacy technology isn't always fun but it can be done. Andy McCue reports on how IT bosses juggle old and new in their organisations.

Legacy systems remain the bane of many an IT director's life, draining precious resources just to keep the things up and running.

Some sectors, such as financial services and insurance in particular, have more of a legacy IT problem than others, with creaking mainframe systems accumulated through decades of mergers and acquisitions.

Of course many of these systems still do a good job - but the question is at what cost? If the maintenance, operation and support of the legacy systems are draining IT money away from new tech investment then that has a negative impact on an organisation's ability to remain competitive.

It's a juggling act IT bosses are all too familiar with and more than half of silicon.com's CIO Jury IT user panel this week said legacy systems are one of the single biggest challenges or obstacles to business transformation today.

Analyst Gartner, crystal ball-gazing last week in its '10-year technology vision', urged businesses to kill off costly legacy IT systems, saying those who don't will find it hard to compete in the future tech landscape.

If only ditching legacy - or heritage, as some prefer to call it - IT was so simple. Peter Maddigan, associate director of IT systems at Budget Insurance Services, said it is a complex issue.

He said: "There are often powerful political interests to deal with and legacy applications can be seen as providing a unique source of competitive advantage. Faced with this, the CIO needs to carefully build the case for change, which must be purely in business terms. Successfully transforming legacy IT systems can be career defining for many an IT leader."

One of the problems with legacy systems is that they encourage silos of information in an organisation because of interoperability and interface issues. This leaves two options - building a complex 'black box' to resolve those problems, or ripping out and replacing the whole lot.

At the same time, some are still remarkably effective. Les Boggia, IT division head at Carole Nash insurance, warned: "Of course, the thing to remember is that whilst the legacy system is 'annoying' it does usually do the job required."

And taking the 'big bang' approach to replacing legacy systems is not a choice many IT directors would relish.

Phil Young, head of IT and operations at Amtrak Express Parcels, said: "Taking a 'big bang' approach is a risky business and therefore we have to move each service from the systems onto new platforms. I can assure you this is a very slow process when we have 'daily' commitments to service and this can take years to do in an ever fluent business like ours."

All of which leaves IT bosses to try and balance the percentage of their investment budget that goes on sustaining legacy systems versus investing in new programmes of work for the business. It's a balance that Luke Mellors, IT director at The Dorchester Hotel, says is "killing me".

Mellors said: "If I could start from scratch in an organisation, I could drive more value then if I started with existing legacy systems. Why? Because often it isn't just the legacy system it is the legacy people who operate it, the legacy processes that are embedded in your organisation because of it, an legacy mindset of apathy related to it and finally the stifling of creative thinking that legacy systems seem to encourage."

But it is a situation most IT bosses have to live with, and will for the foreseeable future. Christopher Linfoot, IT director at LDV Vans (who apologised for his "dreadful" gardening analogy in advance), said managing a portfolio which includes legacy systems is like managing a garden.

He said: "What is important is not the age of the plants and shrubs but their continued vitality supported by appropriate pruning, freedom from weeds and the provision of sufficient space for new cultivation. In a properly managed garden there aren't acres of weeded up dead wood and so it is with a properly managed application portfolio."

Andy McCue is chief reporter at silicon.com