Evaluate and Modernize Existing Applications Before Attempting to Replace Them Entirely

London, July 2, 2003

According to Butler Group's latest Technology Evaluation and Comparison Report, Application Modernization - Strategies for Embracing Current and Future Technologies, with so much emphasis given by industry commentators on the new and exciting, it is sometimes easy to forget that the way forward will be built on the tried and the tested, the here and now. Butler Group believes that in many instances there are cases for transforming existing applications rather than replacing them wholesale.

It is a common myth that the value of existing systems is low - they are not fashionable and it may be seen that investing personnel, time, and money in them to keep them going is fruitless. IT managers like the idea of spending money on something new and different, and spending money on existing applications is seen as passé. Old software is seen as non-strategic to the business, when in fact the opposite is more often than not true. Butler Group has seen a tendency by the IT manager to accept quick and dirty solutions rather than stepping back and thinking about what improvements can be made to the systems already in place without blindly following fashionable trends.

In the current economic climate IT managers need to pay attention to wringing the most from the tools that are already in place, and spending where it is only strategically justified. Over the last 25-30 years there has been much that has been considered revolutionary within IT infrastructures, but there is far more that has been evolutionary. Revolution is not always the most economic or strategic investment: evolution, whilst not the most exciting, can often be the most viable and rewarding for many organizations.

Modernizing existing applications can be seen more as an 'enabling' technology, in that a modernization project will enable the organization to be in a position to achieve something new, such as allowing customer access via the web.

Mike Thompson co-author of the report commented: "From the start of computing, executives always worked on the assumption that systems would be replaced; that is partly why the Y2K problem occurred. None of the original systems were intended to be in place so long - upgrading hardware took place frequently and upgrading software was seen as a necessary function."

There are alleged to be in the region of 200 billion lines of COBOL code in use, being added at a rate of five billion a year by maintenance and development work. For many, rewriting or replacing entire applications is not an option, and yet new features and functions are required by the business. Application modernization can be the ideal strategy to embrace the changing face of your business.

Consolidating the value of existing applications should not be treated as a one off project but will need to remain part of an organization's armory of maintenance and renewal. This will ensure that organizations continue to derive maximum value from their existing applications for years to come.

Mike Thompson continued: "Software is an asset that should not reduce in value as rapidly as some capital investments - it should always have a maintenance program, just like a house which needs the occupier to check the guttering, repaint the windows, even build an extension or loft conversion. These options, whilst they may take some time, and are not always an enjoyable activity, are much cheaper than replacement or even moving to a bigger house. With software, the same considerations apply - maintenance is a fact of life. It may not be the most popular activity in the IT department but it can be the most strategic."