Cancel Legacy Thinking, not Legacy Tech

Tuesday, 07 September 2021 09:25

Cancel Legacy Thinking, not Legacy Tech

Hitachi Vantara chief technology officer Australia and New Zealand and director enterprise pre sales George Dragatsis

GUEST OPINION by Hitachi Vantara chief technology officer Australia and New Zealand and director enterprise pre sales George Dragatsis: In a perfect world, you could update IT infrastructure with the latest and greatest whenever you like. But in the real world, the IT team often has to wait out the lifespan of legacy technology. There are four critical mindset updates that will enable modernisation.

As Australia dealt with the impacts of the pandemic, we proved that rapid digitisation was possible. Now, we can either fall back into “we’ve always done it that way” thinking and get “back to normal” or realise that there is a significant opportunity to build on that rapid digital transformation.

It may not make sense to immediately replace every bit of legacy technology, but it’s time to identify and update legacy thinking, so it doesn’t hold back agility, innovation and digital leadership.

Legacy Tech vs Legacy Thinking – What’s the difference?

If a bit of legacy technology or infrastructure is causing shutdowns or slowdowns, or if repairs and upgrades are becoming too costly, you’ll notice there are signs that you need to replace it. Especially if a critical service is facing privacy, governance, security or disruption issues.

But if you must maintain it because it still functions, and you’re expected to squeeze more ROI from it, there are things you can do to bring it up to speed.

Legacy thinking, however, can create obstacles and stunt growth long after new technologies are established. It exists in teams, C-suites, private companies and public sector agencies all around the world, and it’s the kind of thinking that prioritises “we’ve always done it that way” over innovation.

Legacy thinking resists change, forcing people to slog away at manual processes instead of enabling them to get onto more valuable work. It can cause problems in leveraging the cloud due to complacency. That leads to applications and workloads being re-created in the cloud rather than redeveloped for the cloud, meaning the business can’t take full advantage of the benefits of a cloud environment.

Wherever it exists, a siloed mentality can encourage power struggles, stoke fears related to data sharing, and trump organisational efficiency.

Legacy thinking must be identified and modernised. The goal should be to remove obstacles to collaboration and encourage cross-functional, data-led innovation.

Four critical updates for a modernised mindset

It can be frustrating to hold onto legacy technology in the face of ever-growing requirements for data management, speed, data access, data protection and regulatory compliance.

However, modernisation is still possible if you keep the following in mind:

1. Strive to become data-driven. At Hitachi Vantara, we advocate for shifting the collective mindset from having data support the business to having data drive the business. Ultimately, you need to be able to transform your data into valuable insights and make those insights available to the right people at the right time. To accomplish that, you need to maximise both your infrastructure and your analytics capabilities.

We believe every organisation has the potential to become data driven. And when they do, they can create solutions to the world’s most pressing business, societal and environmental challenges.

2. Silos bad. Sharing good. You can leverage technology solutions, platforms and dashboards to not only integrate data from different systems (including legacy systems and arrays) but also manage its storage, protection and availability. Any resistance or obstacles to sharing information between agencies and departments must be overcome, in order to find the most value from that data. Then you’ll truly be able to power next generation digital services.

3. You don't have to be content with legacy tech. You can improve it. Legacy infrastructure can be augmented and supported, for example to achieve better performance, speeds, accessibility, throughput and security. Look for technology partners that understand a complete refresh isn’t always possible, and can offer you ways to get the remaining ROI out of your legacy systems.

Hybrid Cloud is the way forward. Currently, the public cloud isn’t right for every single workload or application, especially when it comes to the public sector’s sovereignty and security requirements or organisations preferences around the same. However, cloud-like capabilities, services, configurations and consumption models are highly desirable. Let go of any “on prem vs cloud” legacy thinking. A smart cloud strategy is a hybrid cloud strategy designed around your particular requirements and cloud maturity level.

When a company or a public sector agency goes out to tender for an IT project, it’s typically not possible to include a refresh of every single bit of technology they might like to replace.

The good news is that elements of modernisation and digital transformation can be accomplished, even if you must hold onto some of your legacy technology and solutions.

Especially if there’s no legacy thinking holding you back.

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