Current Blog Series: Answers to the top 10 Questions CIOs face when considering an IBM i Digital Transformation Project
Over the next couple of months, we will be discussing the Top Ten questions CIOs face when considering the Digital Transformation of their IBM i application portfolio. Following is the first in the ten-part series.
Question 1: Why not stay on the IBM i platform indefinitely?
As the global pandemic drags on with resulting shelter in place restrictions, most enterprise businesses' survival depends on their ability to support a remote workforce. This requirement has led even the most conservative IT organizations to consider cloud-based solutions for their enterprise-critical systems seriously.
Yet, the magnitude of the effort is daunting. Traditional legacy applications are monolithic and offer little to no visibility into what the systems do. If yours is like most organizations, you lack accurate, up-to-date documentation of your mission-critical applications and have no access to your system's original authors or technical subject matter experts who have a deep understanding of your complex application portfolio.
Most likely, your organization has relied on your legacy IBM i systems to support critical business operations for decades successfully. Some in your organization, maybe even you, question why you should take on such an enormous effort when your application portfolio runs like a well-oiled machine.
It is quite tempting to stay on the tried-and-true IBM i platform. In many ways, it is as familiar and as comfortable as an old shoe. But if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that our beloved platform offers limited access to the internet, the cloud, and most emerging strategic technologies. For most of us, the budget for maintaining these old systems represents the majority of our authorized expenditures while offering little or no strategic value or new operational capability. The cost to maintain these systems will soon consume our IT budgets and eclipse the available funding for meaningful technical advances.
Even with increasing maintenance costs, access to qualified legacy technical talent is dwindling, and our backlog is mounting. Technical debt will soon be insurmountable as access to legacy technical experts disappears. As a result, our vast investment in our essential corporate asset, our legacy application portfolio is at risk.
What will happen when the last legacy application expert disappears? How will you support the mission-critical systems required for your organization's daily operations?
Though there are significant challenges with our IBM i systems' digital transformation, the risks of retaining the languishing legacy systems are profound. Legacy systems do not address the ever-increasing calls to support a remote workforce. They offer no meaningful access to the cloud or emerging strategic technologies.
We have reached the point where the pain of staying the same has exceeded the pain of change. Adopting modern, cloud-based systems is a strategic imperative.
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