What are legacy systems?

Definition

A legacy system is outdated software that, after decades of use, can no longer keep up with the latest technological advances.

Because of the technologies used in legacy IT applications, interaction with innovative, newer systems is disproportionately complicated, complex and expensive. Consequently, the path to digitization and automation of business processes is unnecessarily hindered. Legacy software makes it difficult to create an IT infrastructure that can react flexibly to changing structures and requirements. Therefore, there is usually no way around a system transformation and corresponding application retirement solutions.

Decommissioning a system is a major project that cannot be completed overnight. In addition to the fact that systems can no longer be optimized after a certain point, there are also legal regulations that are usually difficult or perhaps impossible to comply with. If companies determine the status quo and the desired requirements for a software, it quickly becomes clear why the change to a new system and thus the decommissioning of legacy systems makes sense.

5 reasons to consider retiring legacy systems

Definition

Data that is no longer used but still needs to be stored - whether due to legal retention periods or to be used as a reference at a later date - goes into archiving. This means that when data is transferred, it is stored at a storage location specifically designated for this purpose - an archiving software. There, the data is indexed in a way that it can be found quickly - for the respective purpose, e.g. economic or tax audits - even after long-term archiving.

How does secure data archiving work?

Above all, it is important that all necessary data is stored in a complete, audit-proof and GDPR-compliant manner. In addition, all data must be labeled with their respective retention periods and only authorized persons may access them. This applies in particular to personal data, which must be stored in a legally secure manner, i.e. anonymized and with restricted access.

Elements, an archiving software should provide

System decommissioning made easy

DCS Retire is a highly secure, cloud-based storage for legacy data. With the help of the DCS Migrate, the data to be archived is extracted from legacy systems, tagged with deletion date and customer reference, and then transferred to the cloud storage. Based on a cloud infrastructure (e.g. Microsoft Azure, SAP BTP), DCS Retire mainly consists of an archive database, which is composed of a web connection, making it possible to ensure secure access to the database. The migration of the data can be carried out from any source system – whether SAP, Salesforce or Lotus Notes.

Several checks guarantee the completeness of the data. The creation of hash values ensures that all data is consistent between the legacy system and DCS Retire after extraction.

Other benefits of DCS Retire:

• Original data structure remains in place and retrievable

• Reduction of operating costs due to decommissioning

• Easy retrieval of data for the respective purposes e.g. auditing etc.

• Uniform, encrypted storage of data with defined access rights

• To ensure data protection and retention periods, the function for masking, deleting and blocking data is integrated