My initial eulogy for Legacy Systems

Most eulogies are written when your dear friend is still alive, but you start writing at the point in time when you have realized the "writing on the wall". Eulogies are never easy to write because you are afraid that all the good things you have to say are forgotten and remain unsaid. So, I'll do a little prelude.

This is not me passing a death sentence on legacy systems as such and on no individual system in particular. That is not the case, at all, but now approximately one year since my last blog post; I thought that I should provide a sequal;

Legacy system have been the "undisputed enterprise heavy weight champions" of Life Science systems and many other industries too. However, that might still be the case, to some extent, but there is now some "new Sheriffs in town". Ones that don't play by the same rules - ones that are redefining the rules of the game.

While uncertainties around the legacy systems are in the room, then the customers start looking elsewhere. They are raising their sights towards the industry clouds.

In Europe, until EMA (European Medicines Agency) have relocated to a new home, it is clear to me, that customers are taking advantage of this to assess their existing systems of records. The customers and the industry is also making own steps via the PhUSE group towards adoption of the cloud and application platforms;

Speaking of EMA, and as proud Dane and "Copenhagan", I will allow myself a smaller detour in the blog post over to the Danish candidacy for becoming the new home for the agency;

I hope you see this candidacy as obvious as I do. In case that you don't, please visit the above website or pay a visit (physically or virtually) to "Wonderful Copenhagen".

Well, back on track..

Industry Clouds

Many life sciences and large pharmaceutical companies are struggling with the business agility around their existing monolithic legacy systems of records. For some, it might even be more numbers of the same or similar systems, as many large pharma companies are the results of mergers and acquisitions. These are (non exhaustive list, by far);

• Regulatory Document Management Systems (RDMS)
• Regulatory Information Management Systems (RIMS)
• Quality Management Systems (QMS)
• Pharmacovigilance and Safety Systems (PV)
• Clinical Trial Management Systems (CTMS)

Let's call these systems of records for legacy applications - for the sake of the argument - but the list is really much longer.

The cost of stale Legacy Systems

The challenge around these systems are; they require frequent technical upgrades in order to remain under maintenance from the software supplier - unless you want to enter into "extended maintenance", which is even more expensive. That cost is not really the most important one. The really cost is hidden in the lack of business agility while these stale systems are being upgraded, and even after. These technical upgrades often require a "refresh" of the hardware, on which they run that needs to be qualified, which also incurs a significant cost. That is without adding any real and tangible business benefits to the business who are sponsoring and funding the upgrade. On top of that you might have several application servers or middleware components and database server components which are also part of your system stack, that needs to be upgraded too. Yes, you guessed it, they too add to the total cost of your system, with similar little or no tangible business benefits added to those who are paying for the whole thing.

Now, by the time you come to the business application itself, you have already spent a lot of money, but often when performing a technical upgrade it leaves you little new functionality in the application itself. All that effort!?

Often upgrade projects, like these, takes 18-24 months to complete (almost regardless of what system we are talking), during which the system scope and functionality is frozen, which is not at all in line with the change cadence and flexibility that today's pharmaceutical business require of their systems. That leaves you approximately one year to implement your business requirements and changes. Continuous upgrade projects like these, stack up to significant piles of cash over the systems' life time.

Adding to these massive costs are also the heavy customized nature of these incumbent legacy systems. They are often the result of incremental, heavy, highly specialized and specific business requirements, that are in no or very limited way standard across the industry. That means, that whenever upgrades are to be performed all of these special and specific requirements are to be taken into consideration for continued operability. Not often are these upgrade projects including efforts to simplify or disentangle these accumulated configurations.

Put bluntly, they are the result of internal IT and system integrators not being capable of saying "no!" to their business partners. But then again, who were they to decide, when the customer is putting forth a demand and is willing to pay. Also, other alternatives to legacy applications were not available at the time of making those decisions. Therefore, no one are to blame, but the alternatives are available now.

I propose that you run the exact numbers for your systems, and I encourage you to continuously scan for alternatives and include those in your application strategy road maps.

The benefit of Industry Clouds

The cloud players have had the absolute luxury of not having had to bother with how legacy systems are designed and what their limitations are. They have had the ability to totally rethink how things are done. That is; not only how new technological architectures (e.g. multi-tenancy etc.) are designed and built but more importantly;

• How applications are potentially interlinked and most importantly how business processes cut across.
• How industry data standards are implemented.
• How common industry requirements and business processes are simplified and transformed.
• How the applications are implemented and configured - with speed and agility.
• How platforms and application are swiftly upgraded.
• How platforms and applications are qualified and pre-validated.
• How usability is transformed.
• How application performance is transformed.
• How new commercial delivery (subscription/consumption) models are designed.

The business are now enabled to be in the driver seat, which I think is only reasonable, when it's their business processes, systems, requirements and their budgets.

Big budgets!

The paradigm shift

I do acknowledge, that there are good systems out there (none mentioned - none forgotten). Good legacy systems! However....whatever way you analyze them, you cannot "chisel off the technological concrete", that these system are cast in and on.

My assessment is; that customers are not likely to be willing to pick up that bill of legacy systems anymore. Most importantly, they are no longer willing to accept the hidden cost of not having the required speed and agility around performing changes to their systems, and they are in no way willing to pay for resources, that they are not using. They are no longer willing to pay for systems that are customized entirely and only to fit their past, current or present requirements. They want to rely on an industry baseline, that they can make minor configurations to, going along. They want swift implementations, upgrades and changes.

The advantage of the application platform, is exactly that the concern of managing it going forward, is no longer your concern, but the one of the application platform (SaaS) provider. Therefore, when you assess these SaaS providers you need to factor in, that your per seat price includes all the things you don't want to be bothered with.

Now, if your business partners have reached that state of mind, then they are no longer in doubt whether they want "best of breed legacy applications" or "SaaS application platforms". Overall, they might even be willing to pay more for the new solution and the services around it, in order to gain speed and agility.

That is the new paradigm, and thus my initial eulogy for legacy systems remains a draft in my drawer, I am [*gulp*] preparing myself for the day, where I have to finalize it.