legacy modernization

Enterprises have to constantly find effective ways to re-use their legacy applications and adapt to the changing needs of the business. Today even governments, at the federal, state and local authority levels, are trying to implement a centralised information system to facilitate a standard approach throughout the jurisdiction.

This paper offers insight into how IT managers within government department can take steps to upgrade existing legacy applications to take advantage of new technology and best practices to meet the changing requirements of citizens and businesses.

Legacy code is all pervasive. Industry analysts estimate that there are between 200 and 300 billion lines of mainframe legacy code. COBOL accounts for about 70% of that, with five billion new lines of code added each year. This article will examine various approaches to managing legacy code so that IT departments can maximize the performance of their existing applications.

There is value in old COBOL applications but can I put some of the cool functionality of AJAX and let customers create new smaller APPS using mashups? Governments being the largest single consumer of technology have legacy applications written in old, obscure programming languages. The bureaucratic nature has perpetuated the life of these applications for ages. And its not changing any time soon. So here is help for those still using COBOL in the government.

Legacy applications that support government departments like purchasing, finance, taxation, immigration, homeland security to name a few, probably were written years ago. These legacy applications need to be updated as governments look to enhancing the service they deliver to citizens using new channels like the Internet, mobile devices and self-service kiosks. This paper offer guidance on how governments can pursue a legacy modernization strategy using SOA to improve civil service productivity and enhance application security.