Replacing legacy systems can be expensive, highly disruptive, and take a really long time. What if there was an alternative? One that enabled you to recycle those systems and modernize your environment quickly? Business process automation can help you do just that.

1. Legacy
Modernization:
Don’t Replace,
Recycle
Replacing legacy systems can be
expensive, highly disruptive, and take
a really long time. What if there was an
alternative? One that enabled you to
recycle those systems and modernize
your environment quickly? Business
process automation can help you do
just that.
www.everteam.com
745 Atlantic Avenue, Boston, MA 02111 – USA
Dan Griffith
Sales Director, US and Canada
Everteam

2. Replacement is Almost Futile
Out With the
Old. Kind Of.
It’s no secret that organizations struggle with legacy applications. Whether
they are mainframe, custom built or simply past their prime, legacy systems
are a pain. These systems take up way too much support time, are hard to
update (if you can update them at all) and are very difficult to work with. In
fact, no one in IT likes to support them.
There is a constant need to upgrade business critical systems, but getting rid
of them is nearly impossible. It eats up budget, takes a lot of time and pulls
key resources away from the work they should be focusing on.
That’s why there is so much talk about legacy modernization. Legacy
modernization is the process of converting or porting legacy applications to
modern technologies. You can do this through “rip and replace,” but like I
said, that is not easy, or even feasible in many cases.
The answer for many lies in business process automation. Business process
automation can help you modernize a few different ways. It can:
• Give you access to legacy systems through modern portals
• Support the migration of records and information to less costly
alternatives, such as an application archiving system, and it can help you
• Integrate existing legacy systems.
Let’s examine a couple of ways that process automation helps with the
modernization of legacy systems.
So you can’t get rid of your legacy systems, but you can adopt the practice of “wrapping” them
so you can access them as services through modern technology.
When you create a new application using a business process management system, you
start by taking a high-level view of the processes your application supports. You look at all
the activities, systems and people involved in the process and you think about how they
holistically support a business outcome.
Legacy Modernization: Don’t Replace, Recycle 2

3. Legacy Modernization: Don’t Replace, Recycle 3
Your legacy systems are considered one or more of the activities that you perform as part of
the process. So for example, when a customer wants to review and update their insurance
policy, you have to go to a legacy application that lists all the policies a customer currently
has. Then you might have to go to another legacy application to view current policies rates.
Then you might have to look at a third legacy system that lists current claims details against
the customer. Finally, you have to put all the information together to determine if you can give
the customer a better rate on their insurance policy.
Each of these activities is an individual transaction that takes time and effort. Business
process automation enables you to put all of these together into a centralized process flow.
This centralization of a process happens by wrapping the legacy application functionality into
a service that you then integrate into the overall process.
When you approach application development from the perspective of integrating legacy
applications through services, there’s less emphasis on the individual transactions you need
to do in different legacy systems and more focus on the overall process.
In the insurance example, you now have a business process that can automatically go to
each of the legacy systems and pull back the information from each system for an employee
to examine. The process can also automate calculations or rules for the employee. You can
take this a step further and develop a customer-focused web-based interface that enables the
customer to view and change policies in a self-directed manner.

4. Legacy Modernization: Don’t Replace, Recycle 4
Out With the Old For Good
I’ve talked about how you modernization legacy applications by wrapping
them in services that are integrated into process automation applications.
Now let’s look at how you can leverage business process automation to
migrate away from legacy systems partially, or completely.
Let’s say you have a legacy system that contains a lot of records you can’t
get rid of, but the system itself is outdated, and you really want to move to
something that leverages new capabilities, like the Cloud. For example, you
want to move from your outdated on premise HR system and adopt a newer
cloud-based alternative.
It may not sound complicated at first, but consider all the thousands of
records you have in your legacy HR system that you don’t use, but you can’t
get rid of for compliance purposes. Do you want to migrate all of these to a
new cloud-based system? Number one, it could increase the cost you pay
because many cloud-based solutions have a pricing structure that includes
storage. And number two, it could slow down the performance of your new
system, it certainly seemed to slow down your old system didn’t it?
Your best answer to how to deal with all these records is to archive them in
an application archive system. It certainly makes the most sense. Then you
migrate all your current records to the new system, and you’re good to go.
But. What if you decide you want to create a self-service portal that requires
access to both the current and legacy data? How do you pull it all together
easily? The answer is to build your portal application using business process
automation. Then you can develop the services that connect to each system
and wrap them in an agile process layer used in the portal.
Maybe you don’t want to move to a new system, but the performance of
your existing system is getting really bad due to the enormous amount of
records you have in it. This process of migrating data to an archive and then
connecting it all back together via process automation is your best option.

5. Legacy Modernization: Don’t Replace, Recycle 5
Process Automation Lets
You Recycle or Replace
with Ease
To modernize your IT and business, it’s not necessary to replace all
your legacy systems. Sometimes it’s not feasible; sometimes it simply
isn’t necessary. Business process automation gives you the tools to
bring your organization into the present world and enables you to
provide employees and customers with modern systems to do their
work.
You can wrap your legacy systems into services that are then
incorporated into an overall process and make it easier for
employees to do their jobs, provide greater visibility into the process
and enable the agility necessary to compete in today’s constantly
changing market.
You can also choose to replace legacy applications by moving to
newer systems and archiving older records. Or you can improve the
performance of legacy systems by moving archive data to an archive
system. In either case, process automation enables you to bring all
the data back together when necessary and ensure you continue to
meet governance and compliance rules.
At the end of the day, you have to make difficult decisions on how to
move your IT infrastructure into the modern world. Business process
automation may just be your answer.

6. www.everteam.com
info@everteam.com
About
Everteam
Everteam brings over 25 years’ experience and innovation to the field of Enterprise Content
Management. In an ever-increasing legal and compliance environment, Everteam’s range
of products support the improvement of content –driven processes, and enable enterprise
customers to easily monitor and align their content strategies for overall organizational
efficiency and effectiveness.
+33 (0)1 72 71 33 3
336, rue Saint-Honoré,
75001 Paris – France
+1 (650) 596-1800 (voice) / +1 (650) 249-0439 (fax)
745 Atlantic Avenue,
Boston, MA 02111, United States