Legacy systems are the backbone of many enterprises, but maintaining them can strain IT budgets and resources. Fortunately, modern integration platforms now make it possible to manage these systems more efficiently, reducing risk, cost and disruption, especially when using a market-proven service like IBM webMethods and an experienced integrator such as middleware technologies.
middleware technologies helps enterprises extend the life and performance of their legacy systems through smart, non-disruptive integration – helping IT teams manage maintenance with greater visibility and confidence.
Turning maintenance into modernisation
One cannot blame companies for being reluctant around legacy system maintenance. Many large organisations in the public and private sectors can spend up to 80% of their IT budgets on maintenance (GAO). Legacy systems cost more on average to maintain than modern systems, particularly due to their accumulated modifications, technical debt and related skills shortages.
The right integration reduces complications by expanding visibility over legacy components and minimising their unnecessary exposure.
According to middleware technologies, a modern integration platform such as IBM webMethods, coupled with expert planning, design and deployment, radically improves maintenance performance, costs and productivity while keeping system disruption to a minimum.
Some of the significant improvements include:
- Exposing legacy business logic and data as APIs makes them accessible to modern applications, reducing complex and risky direct changes to legacy code while enabling modern workflows and automation.
- Improved observability provides monitoring, logging and analytics capabilities that legacy systems often lack, helping detect issues and performance bottlenecks, deliver audit trails and develop proactive maintenance based on actual usage patterns.
- Changes to business logic can increasingly happen in the integration layer or modern systems rather than requiring modifications to brittle legacy code.
- Providing seamless orchestration and monitoring across legacy and modern systems, improving visibility and control over system performance and maintenance needs.
- Facilitating modernisation, such as converting old green-screen applications into web interfaces without modifying underlying code.
- Empowering enterprises with AI-driven insights such as predictive maintenance by integrating legacy data into IBM watsonx and other AI services, improving proactive management of legacy assets.
middleware technologies has partnered with numerous enterprises to enhance mission-critical integrations, with clients that include First National Bank, Santam, Standard Bank, SITA, AVBOB, Europcar (Motus) and the Mississippi Department of Human Services, USA.
For example, a major manufacturing company partnered with middleware technologies to integrate its legacy ERP with cloud solutions. This approach reduced manual work, enabled real-time reporting and improved overall operational efficiency, demonstrating how middleware enables modernisation without disrupting existing systems.
The value of ongoing maintenance
The complexity, risk and costs of maintaining legacy systems motivate IT teams to delay and procrastinate. But this approach invites unplanned and expensive downtime. Modern integration platforms like IBM webMethods provide new capabilities to monitor, plan and execute maintenance with minimum disruption.
Speak to the experts at middleware technologies about how to transform your maintenance challenges into modernisation opportunities – improving system reliability, visibility and performance.
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