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Managing legacy technology

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For the full definition of legacy technology, see the Updated Definition of Legacy IT.

Issues that stop legacy technology migration

Most organisations will have an overarching IT strategy that complements the organisation’s business strategy. Your organisation’s IT strategies will consider the best approach to legacy migration which can include:

Which strategy, or combination of strategies, your organisation uses will depend on its size and infrastructure complexity.

The main areas that cause technical blockers to legacy migration are the complexities associated with the:

  • age of the technology in use - older technology can become unstable and you may find it harder or expensive to find replacement parts if it needs repairing
  • dependent systems and services - you may find it difficult to discover how the infrastructure has evolved and how you can disaggregate additional dependencies away from old technology without causing a loss of service interruption to your users
  • data held by the organisation - you may find it difficult to know exactly what data you have or its schema, and how you can migrate it, especially if it is held using legacy or proprietary data stores
  • technical debt in legacy systems - this is often more expensive for you to resolve and takes longer to fix than in newer technologies if there is a lack of the right skills and tools in your team
  • size of the system or infrastructure and the time it takes you to migrate larger scale technology
  • lack of proper documentation for your legacy technology - this causes lost time and money if you need to find out exactly what the technology is and how it runs before working out how to migrate it

    • Organisations are likely to have strategies for overcoming these technical issues. However, organisations may have trouble completing legacy technology migrations due to non-technical issues.

    The main non-technical blockers for organisations are:

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