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Rethinking the Notion of Legacy
The word "legacy" has many positive connotations when used in the context of society--the legacy that one will leave is generally viewed as a positive thing. However, in the IT world, legacy has a much different, more negative meaning.
Legacy systems, in general, stand for all those outdated systems that today's young computer programmers wouldn't be caught near. What is legacy and what is not legacy continues to evolve as new technologies are introduced and others retired. Powerbuilder was not legacy 10 years ago, but certainly is now! The truth is that legacy in IT is less about technology but rather more about complexity and architecture than anything else. Even with new technology today, we continue to build legacy systems. Let me explain why...
Legacy systems, in my definition, have three key characteristics:
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They are designed with a set of specific business purposes in mind without regard for impact upon other business processes.
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They are built with little thought around application and data architecture.
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They are not easily unlocked. In other words, if other systems want to use data or functionality from the "legacy" systems, it is difficult to integrate easily.
Given this new definition, legacy systems continue to proliferate today. Is a poorly implemented SAP system legacy? It absolutely is, because the …
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