Note to CIOs: Keep the Mainframe Legacy App

Enterprises with large, mainframe-based legacy applications that provide CRM and ERP (enterprise resource planning) functionality may want to consider keeping them and upgrading them exactly where they live -- on the big box.

Aberdeen Group report author and senior vice president Wayne Kernochan told CRM Buyer Magazine that many IT executives believe they are facing an either/or choice when deciding whether to leave their legacy applications as is or purchase a new, packaged application. However, the option they rarely consider is using middleware tools to Web-enable the app directly from the mainframe.

Backed into a Corner

Kernochan explained that many IT groups back themselves into a corner by assuming that they must either live with a mainframe system as it is or replace it entirely. There is a middle ground, he proposed, that does not necessitate dumping the whole thing: Applications can be beefed up and fitted with Web browser front ends.

Kernochan drew a line between "Web enablement" -- adding Web browser interfaces for users -- and "Web services" -- the strategy of implementing key apps using open standards and providing interfaces outside the organization. Both can be done, he said, without migrating an application to a new platform or rewriting it entirely. Both are enormously expensive options, he added, especially for organizations that are using systems either built entirely in-house or customized extensively since purchase.

Adding a Layer

The researcher named the Unisys (NYSE: UIS) ClearPath MCP suite as an example of an upgrade solution that allows enterprises to enhance mainframe applications while leaving them in place. Such software, he said, provides a layer between the back-end database and the presentation layer of the application. It is this presentation layer -- the screens the user actually sees -- that organizations often are most eager to change and enhance.

This is a strategy that some CRM software vendors have been pursuing with clients for some time. Edify founder and executive vice president John Kirst told CRM Buyer that his company works closely with internal IT groups to take advantage of whatever contact center functionality is already in place -- be it through entirely Web-based apps, client-server technology or legacy mainframe systems.

Edify chief technology officer Ken Waln added that "a lot of that infrastructure, especially on the telephone side, has been in place a long time and works fine."

Sometimes New Is Better

The sensible time to add applications, said Kernochan, is when an organization has outstripped the capabilities of the legacy app and needs new functionality.

"There are very good reasons for getting the added functionality of a packaged CRM application," he said. "But if you're just getting it to replicate an existing application, you should at least carefully investigate the possibility of upgrading it in place."