Using legacy resources. (IT News).In today's ebusiness era, the most successful companies will be those that best exploit their current systems while simultaneously developing new applications to improve business processes, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Information Builders (Information Builders, Inc., New York, www.informationbuilders.com) A software company founded in 1975 by Gerald Cohen that specializes in enterprise business intelligence and real time Web reporting. . In outlining its thoughts, the company has issued a white paper entitled en·ti·tle tr.v. en·ti·tled, en·ti·tling, en·ti·tles 1. To give a name or title to. 2. To furnish with a right or claim to something: `Extending Legacy Systems with ibusiness Solutions' which deals with the importance of legacy renewal and the four approaches it believes companies can take towards enhancing their legacy software portfolio. Comment Industry commentators are suggesting that software investments should be treated much like investments within a financial portfolio. Software investments can be good or bad, short-term or long-term. And, like a financial portfolio, a software portfolio should be re-evaluated continually and altered to suit the investor's (enterprises) financial goals. For many, there is the tendency to retire legacy applications in favour of this year's new `killer appl'. This is equivalent to selling all financial holdings during a market fall - even bonds and real estate. Many companies still have as much as 80 per cent of their data residing in legacy systems, leveraging these applications not only makes sense but may also be the path forward. To help aid IT Directors evaluate their current systems, Information Builders has outlined four different approaches to legacy renewal, varying in effort and complexity of implementation, and in functionality. The framework, they provide, enables IT Directors to decide which approaches to apply to specific applications. Stage 1 - Screen-Scraping Replacing green-screen terminal emulation Using software in a desktop machine to make it perform like a hardware terminal. The emulated terminal is typically in the VT100-500 family, designed originally by Digital Equipment. screens on a one-to-one basis with a graphical user interface graphical user interface (GUI) Computer display format that allows the user to select commands, call up files, start programs, and do other routine tasks by using a mouse to point to pictorial symbols (icons) or lists of menu choices on the screen as opposed to having to (GUI (Graphical User Interface) A graphics-based user interface that incorporates movable windows, icons and a mouse. The ability to resize application windows and change style and size of fonts are the significant advantages of a GUI vs. a character-based interface. ). This requires no changes to back end applications. Stage 2 - Interface Redesign re·de·sign tr.v. re·de·signed, re·de·sign·ing, re·de·signs To make a revision in the appearance or function of. re Interface redesign is the process of enhancing a legacy system's user interface by customising the look and feel of its screens for Web browser The program that serves as your front end to the Web on the Internet. In order to view a site, you type its address (URL) into the browser's Location field; for example, www.computerlanguage.com, and the home page of that site is downloaded to you. access. Stage 3 - Middle-Tier Integration With Stage 3 legacy renewal solutions, new business logic can be added to existing applications in order to enhance their functionality, or to streamline the operation of legacy systems. Stage 4 - Legacy Migration The most advanced and potentially most costly legacy extension option is legacy migration. Here, rather than building on code and data available today, create new applications, and migrate or stage the data in a new environment that supports the new application. www.ibi.com |
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