Modernizing old, outdated business applications can boost productivity, efficiency and transform your organization. So why are businesses still holding onto obsolete systems?
Today we’re tackling legacy migrations — what they are, the benefits and why your organization should consider migrating their legacy applications to the cloud.
What Is a Legacy Application?
A legacy application is a software program or application that is outdated or obsolete. Typically, they’re on-premises applications or programs that companies have relied upon for years. They include everything from QuickBooks, sales or CRM applications to custom and industry-specific applications.
A legacy migration is when a company moves outdated software, platforms or applications from an on-premises server to the cloud.
Why Businesses Still Have Outdated Legacy Applications
Legacy migrations are business-shifting, daunting projects. Businesses are often reluctant to migrate their applications. There are several reasons for this:
- Business need: If the application is functioning, there isn’t an urgent business need to fix or upgrade it. It’s easy to maintain the status quo when employees are comfortable using it (even if there are issues).
- Cost: The cost of designing, replacing or updating a legacy system can be staggering at first. Legacy migrations are complex, time-consuming projects, and costs can spiral out of control if mismanaged.
- Business disruption: Updating the legacy applications can disrupt traditional workflows and employees, which many businesses are reluctant to do.
However, maintaining the status quo can hold a business back, especially when it comes to their IT environment.
Why Businesses Should Migrate Their Legacy Applications
Businesses often don’t realize when they need to migrate their legacy applications. It’s smaller, annoying IT issues that add up over time and indicate a bigger problem.
Typical indicators include:
- Always having to reboot or restart computers
- Difficulty onboarding new users
- Poor backup management
- Struggling to access information when and where you need it
- Don’t have the capabilities to support multiple offices or remote staff
These aren’t just annoyances — they promote inefficiency and weaken security. Here’s why you should migrate your legacy business application.
Cost Management
Investing in IT infrastructure is expensive. It’s one of the most significant line items in an IT budget. Servicing old hardware is like driving a rundown vehicle — the longer you have it, the higher the maintenance costs.
By migrating your legacy application to the cloud, you use the cloud provider’s infrastructure, reducing your maintenance, software and licensing costs. Plus, you only pay for what you need, reducing overhead IT costs.
Data Protection
Legacy applications typically aren’t well-protected.
Locally hosted software often can’t be updated, leaving your business vulnerable to viruses, data loss, intellectual property and identity theft. Legacy applications also don’t typically have a reliable backup or data recovery plan to restore data in the event of loss or damage.
Poor Availability
Legacy applications are slow. They can take forever to load, are frustrating to use and difficult for new employees to learn. Storing vast amounts of data and applications on legacy systems and expecting them to perform on par with today’s more advanced technology isn’t feasible.
Migrating your business application to the cloud means employees can access data easily when and where they need it.
Compatibility Issues
SaaS applications. Updated operating systems. Smartphones and mobile devices. Legacy systems are incompatible with many elements of modern IT infrastructure. As a result, many organizations have a cobbled together IT environment that doesn’t fit their needs.
Migrating your business apps to the cloud upgrades your entire IT infrastructure and allows you to configure an environment that meets your modern business needs.
Technology
Tracking and upgrading underlying server software is time-consuming and often requires business downtime. Cloud services & applications are continually improved, updated and expanded based on customer feedback and experimentation.
In many instances, upgrades occur automatically in the cloud. With the shared resources of thousands of cloud users, you benefit from the collective insight, with access to updates, features and improvements to optimize your work experience.
Mobility
Legacy applications typically require Windows devices to access them. Many businesses use Mac devices, especially third-party partners, vendors, freelancers and consultants. Additionally, employees often use mobile devices to check their email in off hours.
Cloud-based data and applications make your data available 24/7 to your employees. Employees and consultants can access data when and where they need it, and multiple users can share and work on the data at the same time.
Helixstorm Business Application Migration Services
Migrating your business application or software to the cloud doesn’t have to be complicated. You need a partner with the migration expertise to help your business make a seamless transition.
At Helixstorm, our application migration experts can help you transform old applications into new systems that improve efficiency and transform how you do business.
Whether you want to migrate QuickBooks, your CRM or a custom application, we can help you migrate and manage your apps in the cloud to create a more seamless experience.
