By Dan Ilett, 9 December 2005 12:25
NEWS
CIOs should stop resuscitating costly legacy systems and just let some of them die in 2006 if they want to fight complexity in the enterprise, according to Gartner.
The analyst said "resuscitating" old IT systems will become costly as businesses move towards a service-orientated architecture.
John Mahoney, chief of IT management research for Gartner, said: "Each time you resuscitate, you're putting it on life support and it becomes more expensive. There are lots of elderly systems around that should have died a long time ago. Growing complexity is going to be the enemy of agility."
Mahoney's comments are part of Gartner's top 10 CIO resolutions for 2006. The analyst is also advising IT heads to spend more time educating the business about "the second internet revolution" and to start planning for long-term goals, especially in skills training.
Mahoney added: "Some people will be in high demand but the real difficulty will be finding people for business-facing roles.
"You want to hand pick a few people in IT and a few from business and bring them into IT. If you are a CIO thinking about a broader role or moving to another company, think about developing lieutenants."
Although none of the analyst's tips would come as rocket science for most CIOs - Gartner, for example, recommends building stronger relationships with CFOs and CEOs - it also said they should look at some of the new technologies including web applications such as Flickr.com, Google Earth, Numsum.com, Writely.com or an in-house pilot of a consumer technology such as work-from-home over broadband or PodCasting company communications.
Comments
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1. Praval Dube
I hop Gartner has done considerable study before issuing such advice. As there are infact many critical systems like stock exchanges and banking applications running on mainframes without any problems, the problem is the risk invoved, switching cost associated and reliability of new technology as it can result in huge financial loses and instability. Again it is to be noted that mainframe technology is robust and it proven for massive On-line transaction processing. Will taking this risk is quick, easy and advisable??
2. Simon
It's a hard life being a consultant - pick a topic, say something bleedingly obvious, then charge the customer a furtune for the pleasure !
However, the article seems to assume that legacy=bad, whereas some of these legacy systems are still in use for one simple reason - they fulfil a job that needs to be done, have done for years, and may well do so for some time yet. Perhaps that's because many of them came from the days when 'professional' people specified them, experienced people built them, and they were built to do a defined job. OK, so none of this is considered important these days when it seems anything knocked up by someone fresh out of school on their nintenboybox to some vague spec is accepted as long as it looks pretty !
3. anonymous
I have several legacy systems that I have to maintain and run not through choice but through legal requirement.
The cost of data transfer from these old systems to new ones is prohibitive, and I have no idea what the repercusssions would be with Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue would be if we did attempt transfer the data.
It is far more cost effective to maintain the systems as they are until the requirement has expired then kill them off.
Once again Gartner states the obvious but misses the point.