IT Ops Training Will Help your Team Connect Legacy Systems with New Technologies

It is no surprise that legacy systems are on the way out, paving the enterprise sphere for modern systems that are rapidly becoming the mainstream. This is a progressive step, since innovation is at the heart of IT, and the entire IT industry needs to innovate on a regular basis just to survive. Customers are smarter, more aware, and more demanding. Companies want more out of their enterprise software suites, and the average general productivity software user wants to glean more productivity per dollar spent.

On the other hand, some enterprises still use legacy systems, which seems to be very counter-productive, what with the cloud being the center of corporate and IT attention. Healthcare is one industry that is most visibly guilty of this, due to their insistent use of pagers; and outdated technology by all means. Pagers send messages via radio transmission, which basically means that external parties could very easily intercept patient health information and put the healthcare official as well as the patient at risk.

Why do hospitals insist on using this technology? Why do so many organizations, not just I healthcare, but in IT as well, continue to use technology that should be retired in favor of more efficient systems? Simple; because according to them, they serve the purpose well enough and newer systems may be either too expensive or too complex (or both) for them.

The ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach can only go so far when it comes to delivering the best service to the end user and the best tools and facilities to internal technology and IT teams. Older systems simply cannot produce the kind of efficiency and deliver the scale of productivity that newer technology can. However, legacy systems do have their advantages. Following are some legacy system plus points.

• A central on-premises data storage system can sometimes be more secure, since stealing data would mean being physically present within the premises and being connected to the internal network.
• A limited number of individuals have access to singular legacy systems such as individual computers and departmental storage hubs.
• Some legacy systems have very specific configurations and are optimized for the company that uses them. This optimization may yield better performance with the older system than a more modern, standard issue system package would.
• Existing systems, when improved and modernized, may prove much more capable of meeting the needs of the company and its bottom line.
• Often the employees most closely associated with the legacy hardware and software i.e. the IT and operations teams will be most capable with the existing systems. Change can mean learning the fundamentals of a new technology from scratch, a painstaking process in some cases.

By far the most productive approach, considering the merits of new technology as well as legacy systems, is to integrate innovative new software and hardware offerings into the existing infrastructure. A hybrid-cloud environment, with certain operational items completely in the cloud, but with most of the infrastructure solidly centered on premises, can be a very effective solution for any organization.

Following are some of the advantages that legacy system modernization brings about.

• Cost savings due to reduced need for new equipment and software subscription.
• Constant maintenance and support not a necessity, due to IT support officials being already aware of existing systems’ capabilities.
• Legacy systems readily adopt technological innovation when implemented correctly.
• Existing infrastructure, when modernized, can become a stepping stone for later migrations into the cloud.

All of the above can be achieved by empowering IT operations personnel with the right tools to successfully and seamless transfer a number of existing processes into cloud-based frameworks, while still maintaining a legacy-based yet modern infrastructure. The importance of effective ITSM training cannot be stressed enough, as IT professionals need to equip themselves with the latest systems and operations knowledge, in order to both implement a hybrid-cloud solution, and provide a promise for continuing modernization, for greater organizational success.