Legacy systems are often thought of as mainframe systems but in effect any system that is in production is already a legacy system and is prone to be reworked and eventually extended, upgraded, converted, completely replaced or simply retired.

It is estimated that most organizations expend 75% of their resources on legacy systems and only 25% of generating new systems. This is an issue when most CIO's believe that the role of their organization is to improve business processes, control costs, find new customers, improve workforce effectiveness, and increase revenue. Further, according to a 2007 survey by CIO Magazine, CIOs have once again indicated that their top management priority is to align business and IT goals.

All this must be achieved as legacy skills are no longer taught at Universities and skills are becoming rarer and therefore more expensive.

The CIO's major challenge is getting the balance right, managing the short-term issues of complexity and costs and at the same time making an investment in the future, deciding what to do with the legacy systems, as they become more expensive to resource and run. Which ones should be replaced? Which ones should be extended? How to meet the strategic business needs while maintaining this balance? The use of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Web services has the potential to vastly improve application flexibility and to rapidly create new applications based on existing services. Most CIO's view this as critical in their treatment of legacy systems and are planning to engage in SOA planning, design, or programming. SOA opens up both opportunities and challenges for extending the life of legacy application investments.

Caro can help with the strategic planning for the treatment of legacy systems and offers various legacy modernization options:

• Re-Engineering

• Re-Facing

• Service Layering

• Portal Development

• Conversion

• And specifically Forte to Java conversion

These services can be delivered individually or in combination as part of an overall strategy. Services that retain existing systems in an SOA architecture have a key advantage of utilizing existing skills. The people that understand your existing applications are the legacy programmers and support staff. Taking an SOA approach, where core functionality remains in the legacy system can mean that you can get the best of both worlds.

Why Work with Caro?

Caro has resources that have significant experience in both legacy application technology and practices and in today's architecture requirements and development practices. We have performed significant re-engineering projects for large companies previously. We believe in a process oriented approach that will step through the re-engineering efforts making you fully aware of all facets of the project from feasibility to production implementation.