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Retire Legacy Applications Seamlessly: Introducing Our Application Retirement Whitepaper
Businesses often burden themselves with legacy applications that no longer serve their strategic objectives. Application retirement, also known as application decommissioning or sunsetting, offers a solution by gracefully transitioning from outdated systems to modern, efficient architectures. Our whitepaper explores the benefits and strategies behind this critical process. Leveraging Digital Archiving Solutions Application retirement concerns the separation of applications and the information stored in them. Indeed, this information has to be available longer than the application itself. Our approach to application retirement revolves around leveraging advanced digital archiving solutions. Our platform allows organizations to seamlessly transfer all data and content—including images, videos, and documents—from legacy applications to a standardized archive. This archive ensures data integrity and accessibility, allowing for easy searchability and reuse in future applications. Our solution extends beyond application retirement, catering to diverse use cases such as preserving digitally signed documents and enabling efficient Quality and Assurance (QeA). A user-friendly dissemination interface empowers users to access archived data effortlessly. What Does It Do? Our application retirement solution delivers tangible benefits: Data Preservation: By retiring legacy applications, businesses can save crucial data and documents in a secure archiving environment. IT System Optimization: Removing obsolete applications leads to streamlined IT systems and reduced operational costs. Compelling Reasons to Retire Applications There are several compelling reasons to embrace application retirement but the most important one are regulatory reasons. Compliance initiatives like DORA and NIS2 require the financial industry and other important sectors to implement secure data archiving and limited access to sensitive information. Besides, transitioning to cloud-based platforms like SAP/HANA or Salesforce becomes smoother when legacy data is archived effectively. You might also opt to modernize your legacy applications; however, this might result in high IT costs. Adopting new solutions often requires retiring older applications while retaining critical data, so it’s a good move to archive this data. A nice extra to eliminating outdated applications reduces system maintenance costs and optimizes resource allocation. Conclusion Application retirement is applicable in every business context. As information can be stored in very disparate systems, combining it in one single archive is not only cost-effective but also a blessing for users. Add to this the disappearance of the need for knowledge of old systems and the accompanying maintenance, and the balance for the solution’s advantage can only be positive.
Making Sense of Application Retirement: How to Streamline Your Process
Applications play a crucial role in running businesses. However, as technology evolves, so does software, and outdated applications can create a mess. Poorly maintained applications can put your business at risk, lead to downtime, and prevent up-and-coming technologies from being implemented. Application retirement or decommissioning is a solution that can help streamline processes, improve performance, and cut costs. What is application retirement? Application retirement, or decommissioning or sunsetting, is a decisive process designed to cease using specific applications without compromising access to vital data stored in their databases. This practice systematically dismantles redundant or outdated business applications while retaining uninterrupted access to their historical data. Legacy applications, often maintained solely for sporadic access to data for legal or business purposes, can be phased out using this process. Application retirement is the proactive shutdown of obsolete applications, colloquially called ‘dinosaur’ applications. The data housed within these applications is migrated to standardized archives, ensuring perpetual accessibility for legal, compliance, or future business needs. This strategic approach guarantees a seamless transition away from outdated technology while preserving the integrity and accessibility of valuable organisational data. Application retirement checklist There comes a time when retiring an application becomes a strategic move. Properly managing this process is crucial for maintaining data integrity, complying with regulations, and ensuring a smooth transition. To assist in this endeavour, here’s a comprehensive checklist outlining the essential steps for retiring an application: Step 1: Analyze and Extract Data To begin, thoroughly examine the data within the application. Translate the needs of the business into database extractions to ensure no valuable information is overlooked. Step 2: Transform to Business Objects This step involves converting business records or raw data into meaningful and structured representations called business objects. When retiring an application, reorganise and format the data to align with current and future business needs. Step 3: Store Coherently After extracting the data, store it coherently to maintain its integrity. Include the necessary metadata for validity, making retrieving and referencing the information easy. Step 4: Maintain for Business Lifetime Establish retention properties for the stored data per business requirements and regulatory guidelines. Implement a strong management strategy to oversee the content until its scheduled deletion. Step 5: Consult Information Ensure that business objects are accessible for consultation by relevant stakeholders. Set up access controls and user permissions to guarantee secure and authorised information retrieval. How to go about legacy application retirement Efficiently retiring legacy applications demands a well-defined approach and the utilisation of solutions that provide rigorous project management. The strategy chosen should align with the scale, impact on productivity, and reasons for retirement, whether influenced by software issues or outgrowing the application. Given its inherent complexity and time-intensive nature, it is imperative to navigate this process precisely. Application retirement strategies 1. Priority-Based Application Removal: Begin with applications yielding the most significant cost savings. Optimize value by focusing on apps tied to expiring hardware maintenance contracts for immediate cost reductions. Initiate with legacy applications where functionality and reporting requirements are well understood, building a case for broader assessments. 2. Complete App Removal or Selective Data Retention: Archive all data while maintaining online access through preferred reporting tools. Swiftly implement the most straightforward process for immediate savings. Optionally, selectively retain data based on understanding the application’s data model and retention requirements. 3. Removal of Applications with Limited Value: Strategically retire apps of marginal commercial value to cut costs. Preserve data relationships, even post-retirement, to safeguard future access if needed. Ideal Characteristics of an Application Retirement Solution Your solution should prioritise a systematic approach emphasising cost-effectiveness, data retention, and vendor expertise. Look for a solution with sophisticated capabilities in data modelling, extraction, retrieval, validation, and retention. One feature that can be highly beneficial is modelling legacy application data. If the chosen solution provides application-independent access and reporting while safeguarding data immutability and controlling privileged user access, you will experience the cost-efficiency of application retirement. Eventually, you’ll need to enter the retention period and deletion policies, but more importantly, the solution should align with regulatory and organisational requirements. Additionally, robust audit options to monitor all accesses and actions against withdrawn data contribute to a secure retirement process. Conclusion Application retirement may sound like an extreme measure, but in many cases, it is essential to maintain productivity and stay safeguarded against security breaches. Without retiring outdated applications, they will drain resources and hinder your organisation’s progress. Successful application retirement requires proper planning, which includes identifying critical applications, evaluating the impact of retirement on the organisation, auditing resources, and retaining the necessary data. This will help establish a retirement system that maintains your organisation’s software solutions’ security, accuracy, and efficiency. By embracing application retirement, organisations can stay ahead of technology trends, streamline their processes, and reduce costs.