The growing increase and value of stored data confront organizations with essential management challenges. Among other solutions, new data archiving software helps to do it efficiently and securely.
Above all, they provide availability, cost-effectiveness, and security that improve application performance, including legacy application retirement, ensuring reliable and agile information lifecycle management.
Not surprisingly, application portfolio management is one of the development priorities to respond to business needs. To be competitive, therefore, constant modernization of application portfolios is required. Only in this way will we be able to increase the value of products and services.
A rule of thumb that, on the other hand, advises the removal of legacy applications that are in the data file. Specifically, it is essential to identify those that would be more convenient to retire to reduce maintenance costs.
Thanks to these savings, we would speed up development and modernization projects significantly with the added benefit of being able to decommission all associated hardware and software after application retirement.
It’s also critical to look for retirement solutions that provide an archive of data in a low-cost, feature-rich, centralized repository so that data is available through management compliant with data governance standards.’
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In short, solutions are needed that allow organizations to archive inactive data efficiently. Among other indications, optimizing the archiving of applications implies removing those that have become obsolete with total reliability through automated data extraction, validation, and elimination processes.
Benefits of Application Retirement
In addition to cost reduction, application removal policies provide many other improvements. In general, companies adopt them to achieve advantages such as the following:
- Cost reduction: The elimination of recurring costs, such as licenses, maintenance, etc. We also save space and power consumption in the data center.
- Have a budget to innovate: Deciding to eliminate dispensable obsolete applications allows us to have a larger ICT budget for reinvestment and business growth.
- Risk reduction: The withdrawal of applications of questionable value helps us to comply with regulations in the face of possible audits. Moving data to a shared repository streamlines searches and reporting across different systems.
- More excellent performance: If the exponential increase in data already implies a decrease in performance, the existence of obsolete applications affects it in the same way. Therefore, removing the legacy applications will improve the performance of the rest.
What is the value of a legacy application Retirement?
When retiring an application, it is crucial to determine its value to the business. Since it is impossible to withdraw hundreds of applications at once, we must be selective. In practice, this implies establishing a strategy to remove those meeting a series of requirements, focusing on operability and cost savings.
To make decisions that help us eliminate legacy applications, it is essential to consider parameters such as those listed below:
- Cost of the license, maintenance, and administration of the application.
- The complexity of the application.
- The number of users and frequency of use.
- Costs associated with staff training.
- Cost of personalization or customization of the application.
- Real utility apart from its depreciated commercial value.
Objective: agile and secure access to data
In a scenario where the business value of implementation is marginal, retiring the application will be a good decision. However, we must ensure that retiring that application saves costs and keeps the data intact—no loss or damage to archiving data.
But not only that, but leading data archiving software must go beyond simple storage. Since the information may be required anytime, the application removal solution has to offer good capabilities. Both the data belonging to the applications we decide to retire and the rest must be functional.
Among other basic capabilities, data modeling, indexing for an efficient search, validation of its integrity and accuracy, facilitating access and reporting, and ensuring secure access (only to privileged users) are essential.
Considering that each company will have its requirements in this regard, it is also vital that the application can respond to them. In this sense, along with good practices, the versatility of the solutions is key to a successful implementation.
Docbyte, a Leader in Application Retirement Process:
Docbyte provides several ways to ensure that data is retired correctly and available when needed. It enables the safe decommissioning of legacy applications. You get easy, reliable, and standardized archiving, providing full availability during the ordinary course of business and for potential audits and e-discovery processes.
