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Legacy software and systems are quite common in many companies. But, when assessing the real cost of replacing them, some significant impacts are often missed on the bottom line. 

A legacy system that no longer meets your company's needs and customers and is no longer cost-effective to maintain needs an upgrade. While the financial aspects of maintaining legacy systems are the primary focus, if the older technologies are not managed or appropriately replaced, the productivity impacts are often missed. A legacy system continues to cost the business money in terms of maintenance without ever providing new, innovative services.

Maintaining legacy systems can be expensive; on average, 60%-80% of some companies' IT budgets are allocated toward keeping them running. A legacy system can lead to myriad problems, such as data silos preventing the integration of systems, a lack of adherence to government regulations, and reduced security, all of which can incur high maintenance costs. A legacy system does not just leave the business behind with outdated technology but can severely harm the business's reputation, placing data at risk for breaches.

While you might feel you are saving money when you are not spending resources upgrading software, you are actually costing yourself more in the long run. Software development and documentation are called the TCO, a system's Total Cost of Ownership, or the Software Development Life-Cycle or SDLC. A system's total cost of ownership may include the cost of developing software and documentation, testing, deployment, maintenance, support, training, regulatory audits, security, backups, and provisioning for disaster recovery. These costs manifest in various business areas, including data security, customer experience, employee experience, skills acquisition, productivity, and performance.

The costs involved in running technology systems are numerous and varied. Many organizations fail to properly keep tabs on the long-term costs of running a complex IT system. According to the Gartner data quality market survey, almost 60% of organizations fail to measure the yearly financial costs of low-quality data. Gartner's director of research says that organizations are not just taking a financial hit but that bad data quality practices are undermining digital initiatives, eroding their competitive position, and spreading distrust among customers.

Maintaining considerable tech debt while incurring substantial costs and losing customers' trust is a position businesses want to avoid being in. Though there are upfront costs in developing new solutions, they can be significantly less over time when compared to maintaining broken systems, as defined by the TCO or SDLC. When you partner with a company that follows agile methodologies (like us), which encourage consistent release cycles with incremental changes, you can keep a closer eye on the long-term costs of running a complex web application. This process can help organizations avoid having their systems become legacy or prevent advancement in other areas of the business.A legacy system which is no longer meeting your companys needs and customers, and is no longer cost-effective to maintain, needs an upgrade. While the financial aspects of maintaining legacy systems are the primary focus, if the older technologies are not managed or replaced properly, other costs are placed on a company. A legacy system continues to cost the business money in terms of maintenance, without ever providing any new, innovative services.

Maintaining legacy systems can be an expensive burden, and on average, 60%-80% of the IT budget is allocated towards keeping them running. A legacy system can lead to myriad problems, such as, data silos preventing integration of systems, a lack of adherence to government regulations, and reduced security all of which can incur high maintenance costs. A legacy system does not just leave the business behind with outdated technology, but can severely harm the business's reputation, placing data at risk for breaches.

While you might feel you are saving money when you are not spending resources upgrading software, in the long run, you are actually costing yourself more. Software development and documentation are together called the TCO, or the Total Cost of Ownership of a system. A systems total cost of ownership may include the cost of developing software and documentation, testing, deployment, maintenance, support, training, regulatory audits, security, backups, and provisioning for disaster recovery. These costs manifest themselves across a variety of business areas, including data security, customer experience, employee experience, skills acquisition, productivity, and performance.

The costs involved in running technology systems are numerous and varied. Many organizations fail to properly keep tabs on all of the long-term costs associated with running a complex IT system. According to the Gartner data quality market survey, almost 60% of organizations fail to measure the yearly financial costs of data that is of low quality. Gartner's director of research, says that organizations are not just taking a financial hit, but that bad data quality practices are undermining digital initiatives, eroding their competitive position, and spreading distrust among customers.

Maintaining considerable tech debt while incurring substantial costs and losing customers trust is a position no business wants to be in. Though there are upfront costs in developing new solutions they can be significantly less over time when compared to maintaining broken systems. This is particularly true when you partner with a company that follows agile methodologies (like us) which encourage consistent release cycles with incremental changes.