BPM and Legacy Systems

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By Lou DiToro

Business process management (BPM) sets itself apart from other enterprise solutions because it can be deployed without sacrificing a company's legacy systems. This is important because many legacy systems are mission-critical applications that can't be shut down. More importantly, BPM creates new value from these existing systems and provides real-time access to them.

Legacy systems are those applications users employ because they don't want to redesign or replace them. Sometimes they're considered outmoded or antiquated because they run on systems or platforms that have gone out of style in the corporate data center. Often, they're high availability applications, like customer accounts in banks, where they haven't been taken offline in years. Some may have been written either for efficiency or to take advantage of a platform's key features. Tight integration between hardware and software boosts their efficiency.

Legacy systems are frequently hard to maintain, improve or expand. Their designers may have left the company, and documentation may be inadequate or unavailable. Integration is difficult because new software employs different or more advanced technologies. And sometimes, maintaining the system outweighs the cost of replacing it, leaving businesses in a difficult quandary. Analysts estimate that between 50% to 75% of global software maintenance efforts are devoted to legacy enablement.

Businesses keep legacy systems for many reasons: The cost to redesign them is prohibitive; no one understands how they work; they function at least satisfactorily; and they're available all the time.

What's more, the cost of replacing a legacy system can be high. Some numbers from researchers say that replacement of these key systems can cost five times more than re-use. And that doesn't take into account the risks associated with a new system. Obviously, the decision to replace a working system weighs heavily on managers' minds.

Preserving and extending legacy systems is an alternative to ripping them out. This allows businesses to retain the key systems that drive their companies, capitalize on their systems' longstanding strengths -- reliability, security, and performance -- and minimize installation costs. More importantly, they can greatly reduce the risks associated with replacing these systems.

Four approaches to preserving and extending legacy systems exist. Businesses can:

• Maintain them and accept the costs.
• Make only minor adjustments.
• Modernize and extend them.
• Integrate them with other applications.

Integrating them is the most sophisticated -- and compelling -- approach of the four. It provides the most flexibility as well. But it entails going from embedded processes -- those that are hard-wired inside the applications -- to a cross-functional/cross-division approach that keeps the customer front and center.

That requires making process as real-time, visible and transparent, and dynamic as possible -- real time because customers always want it now, visible and transparent because customers want to be informed, and dynamic because customer needs shift.

The business processes reside on top of those legacy systems, tapping into the data through a combination of service-oriented architecture (SOA) and other Web-based services.

SOA can provide significant IT benefits. It can create new value from existing assets and systems, provide real-time access to what were once batch applications and increase the speed and accuracy of business decisions. SOA can also deliver enhanced customer service, improving retention of those clients.

Integration may happen on an industry standard, an open standard or a private exchange proprietary to the business at hand. But whichever approach, organizations must develop a model for governing the project that keeps the decision-making in the hands of the business people and out of the hands of IT. Otherwise, the business processes will become as entrenched as the legacy systems being tapped -- thereby losing the dynamic quality that makes them unique and interchangeable in the business operation stack.

That's where BPM software solutions excel. BPM provides a layer of instruction that sits atop the integration and gives users a way to adjust models and change flows easily. Tools also typically provide graphical representations of workflow, such as how an account is updated after a purchase or payment.

With BPM, managers can target cross-department processes. Businesses don't need to update existing software systems or replace them. Some BPM solutions are starting to provide collaboration tools, enabling IT people and managers to design and deliver automated solutions while eliminating the need for outside consultants. In short, businesses can deploy BPM solutions in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of other alternatives.

Legacy systems are key parts of many organizations. They often drive the mission-critical applications that businesses depend on. Replacing them can be both costly and risky. Business can preserve and extend legacy systems by moving to a service-oriented architecture. Developing a model that accurately captures the organization's business processes is imperative. That's where BPM comes in. BPM solutions have the tools to help develop accurate models while at the same time providing the ability to make changes to the system quickly and easily. With BPM, systems can evolve and change as the marketplace evolves and changes.

About the Author:

Lou DiToro is a freelance writer who specializes in writing about business processes and competitive strategy. He welcomes feedback on his articles for BPMEnterprise.com. Contact Lou DiToro at louditoro (at) hotmail.com.

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