For Application Development & Program Management Professionals

Modernization Decisions: Migrate, Rewrite, Or Replace A 40-Year-Old Assembler Application?

by Phil Murphy, October 2, 2009

Client inquiries asking Forrester for help in making application modernization decisions have spiked in recent months, spurred on by firms' need to make the most of the applications they already own while jettisoning applications that no longer effectively . . .

For Application Development & Program Management Professionals

Justifying Application Modernization: Industry Analogies Explain Choices In A Business Context

by Phil Murphy, March 17, 2009

Wary business executives are squeezed by external competition for market share and internal competition for operating and IT budgets. Applications professionals can no longer expect that the justification of the twentieth century — "Trust me, you need . . .

For Application Development & Program Management Professionals

Micro Focus's Purchase Of Relativity Strengthens Its APM And Modernization Offerings

by Phil Murphy, December 19, 2008

Micro Focus's acquisition of rival Relativity Technologies for $9.7 million is expected to close in early 2009. What does the acquisition mean to applications professionals? It will have several key positive results, including: the combined company will . . .

For Application Development & Program Management Professionals

Topic Overview: Strategies To Cut Application Costs Using Diagnostic And Monitoring Tools

by Phil Murphy, November 5, 2008

Once developers have implemented and stabilized applications in a production environment, the applications are placed in "maintenance mode"; thereafter, many receive little scrutiny. As time passes, business volumes grow and hardware components change. . . .

For Application Development & Program Management Professionals

Application Modernization Taxonomy Clarifies Choices And Paves A Path For Progress

by Phil Murphy, October 17, 2008

Modernizing aging application portfolios presents application development and program management professionals with a bevy of confusing choices — the IT industry uses terms with overlapping and conflicting meanings that have ultimately lost all clarity. . . .

For Application Development & Program Management Professionals

Use Action-Oriented Categories To Guide Application Life-Cycle Investment Decisions

Human Life-Cycle Analogies Provide No Value And Introduce Bias

by Phil Murphy, October 17, 2008

Excessive IT costs have application development and program management professionals searching for ways to reduce wasteful spending within their application portfolios. Many organizations begin the process by describing applications using human terms . . .

For CIOs

The Application Management Continuum Offers CIOs A Contemporary Approach To Modernization

by Phil Murphy, July 14, 2008

The technology needs of an industry evolve and mature unevenly — in the early years, companies replace technology frequently to scale in step with organic growth. As the industry matures, it reaches a leveling-off point where the need to gain and retain . . .

For CIOs

Academic Programs Are Beginning To Offset Anticipated Mainframe Talent Shortages

by Phil Murphy, March 19, 2008

CIOs who question whether a lack of younger workers with mainframe skills will influence their hardware platform choices are asking the wrong question. At issue isn't the viability of the zSeries platform, but how CIOs can offset any anticipated shortage . . .

For CIOs

Topic Overview: Legacy Applications

Forrester's Reference Guide For Effective Management Of Legacy Applications

by Phil Murphy, August 30, 2007

As an industry, IT tends to dismiss rather than reuse previous technology genres and, as a result, has spent vast sums to rip and replace technology for technology's sake, often at the expense of business value. With value-to-the-business being the rallying . . .

For CIOs

The Pending Legacy IT Skills Shortage

Baby Boomer Retirement Sets Stage For A "Perfect Storm"

by Phil Murphy, July 30, 2007

The Baby Boomer retirement phenomenon will drive the legacy skills issue in IT to new heights. IT organizations that have yet to determine their exposure to the combined threat are playing with fire. Replacing staff members won't solve the problem — literally . . .

For CIOs

CIOs: Attack Weak Application Maintenance Processes That Stifle IT Productivity

by Phil Murphy, February 12, 2007

Forrester surveyed 221 IT decision-makers about their application maintenance habits and preferences — how they organize, budget, and transfer knowledge, as well as what they would do to increase maintenance productivity, given adequate funding. Analyzing . . .

For Application Development & Program Management Professionals

Echoes Of Y2K In Daylight-Saving Time Changes

by R "Ray" Wang, Jeffrey S. Hammond, February 7, 2007

Older applications have outdated daylight-saving time rules that will be superseded by the US Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct). As a result, these applications may report incorrect time from March 11, 2007, through April 2, 2007, and from October 29, . . .

Micro Focus Acquires APM Vendor HAL Knowledge Solutions

Validates APM And Broadens Its Legacy Modernization Offerings

by Phil Murphy, November 9, 2006

Micro Focus announced its intention to acquire HAL Knowledge Solutions, one of the premiere application portfolio management (APM) vendors. The acquisition came as part of an announcement that projected Micro Focus' mid-fiscal year revenues will be in . . .

Got Legacy? Migration Options For Applications

How To Tell When Platform, DBMS, Or Language Migration Makes Sense

by Phil Murphy, September 12, 2006

Although firms are vocal in their dissatisfaction of it, legacy technology continues to run core business functions for medium, large, and Global 2000 companies. Migration can mitigate many of these firms' issues, yet we also found some exceptions to . . .

CIOs Must Target Legacy Applications With A Maintenance Renaissance

by Phil Murphy, June 22, 2006

Today, IT funding priorities for maintenance and new projects are reversed; the majority of funding should be applied to new work, not maintenance. IT needs to understand what an application maintenance norm is, where and when it is too high, and which . . .

Progress Software Acquires NEON Systems

Can It Create A Credible SOA Platform From The Pieces?

by Phil Murphy, Henry Peyret, March 23, 2006

Progress Software's latest acquisition — NEON Systems — adds a formidable set of capabilities for companies seeking to modernize existing 3270 applications. The Progress acquisition makes a lot of sense: NEON gains the strength of a much larger and more . . .

Micro Focus Glitch Is No Cause For Panic

Customers Should Leave The Concern To Wall Street And Carry On As Usual

by Phil Murphy, February 27, 2006

The trading statement issued by Micro Focus on February 23, 2006, is sure to set the tongues of financial pundits wagging. After a review of Q3 results, predictions for the company's full-year results will be below previous management's expectations. . . .

Government IT Follows Software Trends, But Legacy Issues Continue To Slow Progress

by Gene Leganza, January 19, 2006

Forrester's recent survey of IT execs responsible for enterprise software and services shows that integration, security, and standards-based technology implementation are the major software issues for government organizations in 2006. Forrester's data . . .

Got Legacy? Four Fates Await Your Applications

Several Trends Converge To Help You Rationalize Intelligently, Prepare For SOA

by Phil Murphy, January 10, 2006

Organizations have wasted untold millions on purported one-size-fits-all solutions to their legacy application issues: dump the mainframe; rip and replace; move it all to Unix; and, most recently, outsource it all. As they adopted these solutions, IT . . .

The Shortage Of Legacy Programmers — The Reality, The Hype, And What You Can Do About It

by Phil Murphy, November 23, 2005

The looming shortage of COBOL programmers is a common topic in the IT industry trade press. Some pundits fuel the shortage concerns with fuzzy mathematical equations that prove that the entire population of people with legacy skills will soon be extinct. . . .

Java, COBOL, And Perl Share A Common Problem

Lack Of Application Knowledge Creates Maintenance Issues

by Phil Murphy, November 11, 2005

Applications written in Java, Perl, C# or any other language just three years ago have begun to develop "legacy" attributes: The original authors are gone; the applications are poorly documented and poorly understood; and although the business relies . . .

The Path For Renewing Legacy Insurance Apps

by Marc Cecere, October 17, 2005

Application renewal within the insurance industry is on the upswing. What's driving this increase? The loss of key people, inflexibility of legacy systems, and the need to reduce operating costs. As insurance firms go down this path, we recommend that . . .

Stop Treating Maintenance As A Chore

Ensuring Application Health Should Be IT's No. 1 Goal

by Phil Murphy, September 28, 2005

Asking the question, what is the industry standard definition for maintenance? opens a virtual Pandora's box. The root cause for the question is uniform: If you define a work request in a certain way, IT is the one paying for the effort; if you define . . .

IT Alchemy Turns COBOL Source Code Into Java

The End Result Will Disappoint Most Customers

by Phil Murphy, August 31, 2005

Vendors that provide automatic conversion of COBOL to Java to transition out of aging legacy COBOL applications are offering something that is too good to be true. The goals of such an effort are either to create a complete system replacement or to clone . . .

Application Renewal Goes Mainstream

Great News For Vendors; Interesting Times For Financial Services

by Jost Hoppermann, July 8, 2005

Between December 2004 and January 2005, Forrester surveyed IT decision-makers at 64 European financial services companies about their current situation and strategic plans regarding their application landscape. The survey yielded three key results: 1) . . .