Existing legacy applications are often the perceived bottlenecks for companies keen on adapting internet technologies to take their business to a new level. Porting such applications to the web often becomes a very costly proposition. Nevertheless there is precious data which is locked away in these applications which would enhance your business if these were web enabled.
When we say web enabling legacy systems, we are not just talking about mainframe systems. Many organizations have invested much into various kinds of legacy applications from enterprise wide packages to client server applications that run the engines of their various business processes.
Why should you be web enabling archaic legacy applications and systems? What is the business goal out of it?
The web has revolutionized business processes and what customers and employees need and expect. Today, Web enabling of legacy applications and data is the goal of many companies, who look forward to leveraging their legacy data assets by migrating to a web-based communications paradigm.
If you can port all your enterprise software applications onto the web, that would be ideal. Web enabling your existing applications offers high leverage and good return on investment. Distributed applications are easier to develop and deploy. Security mechanisms allow authorized access while protecting valuable corporate data from hackers.
Enterprise applications are seamlessly integrated, so everything works the way it's supposed to-without keeping your system administrators up all night. Web applications run almost as fast as regular ones, with no long delays while pages load. All your applications-from a variety of third-party vendors are cross-platform, so the people in engineering can easily exchange data with your marketing department. And your investment in legacy information and applications is protected.
What does web enabling a legacy system involve?
1. Wrapping the existing legacy application with web technologies. The advantages of this are that previous investment into legacy code remains intact. Also, by segregating the user interface from the business logic module of the legacy application, only that which is required for making your application "Internet aware" can be modified.
2. It is important to establish the proof of concept on the proposed solution by web enabling a part of the system instead of the whole . This will also help you decide what technologies best suit your organization. This in turn can help in defining the long-term strategy on the appropriate solution that will best suit the organization.
3. Sometimes an existing legacy application would need re-architecting to leverage the existing business process. |
