Problems with legacy applications tend to amplify as time goes on, but replacing these systems can be disruptive, not to mention expensive. For tips on how to smooth the upgrading process, Computerworld's John Brandon takes a look at four enterprises' efforts to solve legacy application problems. The common denominator in their success was business analysis.

When Lord & Taylor's parent company bought Hudson's Bay Company in 2008, the acquisition brought together a combined workforce of 75,000 people and two different ERP systems. The solution was to rip out the two systems and replace them with one that met the needs of the new whole. Integrating the systems across numerous locations, training employees and addressing the politics of culture change were among the many challenges to overcome. Enforcing standardization to help contain costs and improve the reliability of operations were part of the solution.

At Iowa Network Services, a legacy backhaul monitoring application had proven effective, except that it did not provide performance metrics that customers wanted for quality of service data. Adding these metrics would have been expensive, which made the cost of replacing the whole system look more palatable. The company opted to deploy a new system that gave them better data, but it ran into complications with including all the data on a single, user-friendly interface. The key to smoothing the transition involved careful training and implementing a new process.

FLEXcon, a manufacturer of films and label adhesives, found itself using a very outdated messaging platform, which caused weekly headaches for support staff. The IT group had skipped several upgrade cycles, but rather than replace the system, they decided to bring the platform up-to-date incrementally. To make the transitions smooth, the support team did extensive testing and sought expert advice. 

For more:
- see John Brandon's article at Computerworld

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