The retirement of legacy applications is one of the biggest hurdles organizations encounter as they transition to the cloud. Legacy applications are old software solutions that can be expensive to maintain, difficult to integrate with new systems, and may not be able to take advantage of the latest technological advances. These applications may have been developed years ago and often run on outdated software platforms, leaving businesses vulnerable to security risks.
What is Application Retirement?
Application retirement is the process of phasing out obsolete software applications that are no longer necessary, supported, or cost-effective. These applications can be retired or decommissioned, freeing up resources and simplifying the IT infrastructure.
More often than not, companies tend to continue running these applications due to the fear of losing valuable historical data or incurring large costs associated with redeveloping them.
One example of legacy applications deeply entrenched in large organizations is custom applications based on the Lotus Notes Domino platform. Lotus Notes, today HCL Domino product portfolio, is a software platform that provides email, calendar, and low-code application development capabilities. T
hese applications were widely used in the 1990s and early 2000s, and many businesses built custom applications on top of the platform.
The problem is that widespread versions of IBM Lotus Notes and Domino are no longer supported by IBM, and even though HCL has been releasing new versions, businesses are looking to retire their legacy applications and to move Lotus Notes data to SharePoint or other platforms.
Why Are Legacy Applications So Difficult to Retire?
Legacy applications are often difficult to retire because they have been in use for many years, sometimes even decades, and may be deeply ingrained in an organization's workflows and processes.
Many of those applications were customized to meet an organization's specific needs, which means that standard off-the-shelf applications may not easily replace them. These customizations can create a unique set of challenges when it comes to migrating data or transitioning to a new application.
Legacy applications may be integrated with other systems, creating a complex web of dependencies that can be challenging to untangle. Retiring one application may impact other systems and also other parts of the organization, requiring extensive testing and redevelopment to ensure that everything works as intended.
Finally, legacy application databases may store a large amount of historical data, some of which may need to be retained for legal, regulatory, or compliance reasons. Extracting and preserving this data can be a complex process, requiring careful planning and execution.
As one Reddit user comments on Lotus Notes application retirement: "We've been decommissioning it for about 9 years now. We just keep passing it from business unit to business unit".
The Path to Retire Legacy Applications
Here are some general guidelines for the application retirement process. You can consider using the following steps as a foundation for your own approach.
- Identify legacy applications: Start by identifying legacy applications that are no longer needed or are not compatible with the new system. This can be done through an inventory or audit of existing applications.
- Prioritize applications: Prioritize the applications based on their value to the business, cost to maintain, and level of risk they pose to the organization.
- Notify stakeholders: Notify all stakeholders, including end-users, IT staff, and management, about the application retirement project and the specific timeline.
- Plan the retirement process: Develop a detailed plan for retiring the legacy applications, including data extraction, archiving, and disposal of the application.
- Extract and archive data: Extract all necessary data from the legacy application and archive it in a meaningful format for future reference.
- Dispose of application: Once all necessary data has been extracted and archived, dispose of the legacy application securely.
- Evaluate success: After retiring the legacy application, evaluate the success of the project based on its impact on the business, cost savings, and risk reduction.
There are several key pitfalls that organizations should be aware of before undertaking an application retirement project.
Lack of proper planning: A lack of proper planning can lead to significant issues, including data loss and disruption of business operations. Developing a detailed plan and timeline for the retirement process is essential.
Inadequate communication: Inadequate communication can lead to confusion and resistance from stakeholders. It's important to notify all stakeholders about the retirement process and provide clear guidance on what they need to do.
Failure to prioritize: Failing to prioritize legacy applications can waste time and resources. It's important to prioritize applications based on their value to the business, cost to maintain, and level of risk they pose to the organization.
Inadequate data extraction and archiving: This can result in the loss of valuable data. It's important to extract and archive all necessary data in a meaningful format for future reference. For example, companies that migrate off Lotus Notes and Domino often tend to preserve important data in the proprietary database format, which usually means storing hundreds or even thousands of discrete NSF files, where each file encapsulates both application and data. Instead, these data should be extracted and preserved outside the original platform.
To avoid all these pitfalls, you should take the time to develop a detailed plan for the application retirement process, prioritize applications based on their value and risk, communicate effectively with stakeholders, ensure proper data extraction and archiving, and finally decommission the legacy applications and platforms. As a result, you can switch things off with confidence.
How to plan application data migration
When planning application data migration, it is important to consider the difference between active and inactive data. Active data is the data that is currently being used by the
application, while inactive data is data that is no longer in use but still needs to be retained for legal, regulatory, or historical purposes.
Identify the active data: Determine which data is actively used by the application and must be migrated to the new system. This may involve working with end-users to understand which data is critical to their day-to-day operations.
Identify the inactive data: Identify which data is no longer in use but still needs to be retained. This may include data that is required for compliance or legal reasons, such as customer records, financial statements, or employee files.
Determine the retention requirements: Determine how long each type of data needs to be retained and what format it should be in. Ensure that information context is also preserved, including metadata, rich content, and links. This may involve working with legal or compliance teams to understand the relevant regulations.
Develop a data migration and archiving plan: Develop a plan for migrating the active data to the new system while retaining the inactive data in a separate archive. Consider using specialized tools or services to extract, transform, and load (ETL) the data into the new system.
Test and validate: Test and validate the migration process to ensure that all data is transferred accurately and that the new system is functioning as expected. It is a good practice to run two systems in parallel for a period of time to ensure that the new system can handle the workload.
This approach can help to minimize disruption to business operations and ensure that critical data is preserved for the long term.
Furthermore, once the organization identifies both active and inactive data and transfers inactive data from the original platform to a separate archive, it can freely build a new system without compromise based on current business requirements and modern technological capabilities.
