COMPENSACIÓN EN REGIONES ÁREAS Y CIUDADES NO RECOMENDADAS

A legacy system is an existing system in operation within an organization. A legacy system uses older technology in which the organization has a con- siderable investment and that might be entrenched in the organization. Some legacy systems have been in place for many years; perhaps the organization spent much time developing, maintaining, and customizing the system. Often, legacy systems are based on old or inadequate technology. In large companies, many legacy systems run on host-based mainframe computers. “Host-based” means that all significant computer processing takes place on the mainframe host computer. Accounting software systems running on such computers are often written in programming languages that are nearing obsolescence. Examples of these software languages are COBOL, RPG, Basic, and PL1.

During the last couple of decades, even as technology advances have made these systems more outdated, many companies have been reluctant to abandon their legacy systems because they were customized to meet the specific needs of the organization and the process to replace them is expensive and time-consuming. Legacy systems may have served companies very well over many periods, and many organizations have legacy systems that they are still attempting to maintain. There are both advantages and disadvantages to maintaining these older systems. The advantages are that legacy systems

1. have often been customized to meet specific needs in the organization 2. often support unique business processes not inherent in generic accounting

software

3. contain invaluable historical data that may be difficult to integrate into a new system

4. are well supported and understood by existing personnel who are already trained to use the system

There are also many disadvantages to maintaining older systems. The disad- vantages are that legacy systems

1. are costly to maintain in both dollars and time

2. often lack adequate, up-to-date supporting documentation

3. may not easily run on new hardware, and the old hardware and parts needed for maintenance may become obsolete

4. are not usually based on user-friendly interfaces such as Microsoft Windows or Apple’s Mac OS

5. tend to use software written in older computer languages, and fewer programmers are available for maintenance

Bowen Workforce Solutions is a Canadian staffing agency that provides numerous job placement, workforce management, and human resource services. The company was relying on an older accounting and payroll system that it implemented over ten years ago. Bowen had purchased the source code of this legacy accounting system and hired a consulting firm to modify the program code to revamp the entire system. Bowen was spending approxi- mately $200,000 per year to maintain and update these custom features in its system. Even with these modifications, Bowen found that it was doing manual and duplicate entries.

To modernize its accounting system, Bowen purchased and implemented a Microsoft Business platform along with HireDesk solutions that integrated the company’s finances, field service, customer relationships, and human resources applications. These solutions speed up and simplify the process of managing job assignments/position openings, select- ing candidates and building effective relationships.3

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Often, companies are faced with the decision whether to replace or update legacy systems. When the benefits outweigh the costs, organizations typically decide to replace legacy systems. Many large corporations replaced legacy sys- tems just prior to the year 2000 in an effort to avoid a glitch known as the Y2K bug, which theoretically would misinterpret date-sensitive information when the computer’s clock rolled over from 1999 to 2000.

Organizations do not always completely replace legacy systems with newer hardware and software systems, but they often try to use new technology to enhance the existing systems. One approach is to use screen scrapers, or front- ware, which add modern, user friendly screen interfaces to legacy systems. There are limitations to this approach, because mainframe systems are not efficient as newer technology at handling data entry by multiple, simultaneous users.

A second approach to upgrading is to use software that bridges legacy sys- tems to new hardware and software systems and interfaces. These interface bridges are called enterprise application integration, or EAI. EAI is a set of processes, software and hardware tools, methodologies and technologies to inte- grate software systems. When EAIs are implemented, they are intended to consolidate, connect and organize all of the computer applications, data and business processes (both legacy and new) into a seamlessly interfaced framework of system components. The EAI allows real-time exchange, management, and reformulation of all of the critical information and business processes. EAIs are developed and sold to companies to put a modern, advanced technology front on older legacy systems, accomplishing the necessary integration of legacy systems with user friendly and modern processing of data. The third method is complete replacement of legacy systems. If the organi- zation can afford the time and money required, the purchase and implementa- tion of modern, integrated systems may be the best approach. Management must weigh the cost and benefits of these alternative methods when facing the decision to update or replace legacy systems.

6. are often difficult to modify to make them Web-based or user-friendly 7. become difficult to integrate when companies merge or acquire other com-

panies, in which case consolidating subsidiary company information into one set of financial statements and reports can involve many manual and error-prone steps

Client-Server Computing (Study Objective 3) 47