Ideas for remedies Current organizations in business and public administration are in a long-lasting process of digital transformation. New opportunities one the one side, a call for more efficiency and efficacy on the other side create an increasing demand for information systems in general. Every new system, however, generates additional system complexity if its operation does not dispose of legacy at the same time. Fields are not green anymore in most cases and therefore, the digital landscape of an organization already covered with many known and unknown elements of technology. This talk addresses awareness and strategy to cope with the increasing complexity within a system of systems based on practical examples of large-scale enterprise endeavors. Presentation by Netcetera CEO Andrej Vckovski at EUROCON17 in Ohrid, Macedonia. EUROCON is a flagship event of the IEEE Region 8 (Europe, Middle East and Africa) held every two years in a different country with participants from all over the world.

1. Dr. Andrej Vckovski
Software Waste Disposal
IEEE EUROCON 2017
6–8 JULY 2017
OHRID
R. MACEDONIA

2. Software Waste Disposal
Dr. Andrej Vckovski
IEEE EUROCON 2017
6–8 JULY 2017
OHRID
R. MACEDONIA

3. Why am I here?
Why and how is this topic interesting?
Why is this relevant?
Ideas for remedies

5. • 350 connected participants (banks, intermediaries)
• 440M transactions (2015)
• >500B CHF payments on peak days (that’s 75% of GDP)
• 3∙1013 CHF per year
• Availability > 99.97%

7. Quelle: https://www.augmentit.ch/

9. Verkehrshaus Luzern : Visualisierung
Quelle: https://www.augmentit.ch/

10. Netcetera | 10
Internet of Things

11. 11

14. Platforms
Arrival & departure
In-/outlet
Track management & scheduling

19. Platforms
Arrival & departure
In-/outlet
Track management & scheduling

20. New
System
Old
System
~40 primary data consumers >100 secondary data consumers
• 30 years old
• Mainframe/COBOL
• Two failed attempt
to replace
New
System
Old
System
Much more
operations cost
From managed
redundancy to many
inconsistencies

21. A pattern ….
Introduce
new system
Decomission
old system
Everything
will be
okay
“Because of XYZ we
don’t shut down the old
one. Doesn’t bother me
to keep it alive”

22. • (from: “Mainframe Transformation – The Elephant in the Room”)
“…. 18% of respondents confirmed
that they had redundant
applications eating up
unnecessary MIPS and had no
means of identifying and retiring
them …”

23. A wallflower ….
Different reasons for aging:
• Technology
• Business needs
• Organizational changes

25. Cost of non-
disposed of
software
waste
Complexity
Wrong
allocation of
resources
Agility
Unknown
risk in the
portfolio
Power,
cooling,
space,
licenses

26. «Technical debt» relief is important
If you don’t want to drown in software waste,
decomissioning is key.
The interdepenencies of applications doesn’t
make it simpler.
Without cleaning up, maintenance and
operations cost will eventually eat up all IT
budget.

27. Within systems and “system of systems”
needed
waste

28. Todays reality
1000+ applications, highly interconnected

29. Why is that so difficult?
Incentives?
As project manager, I have
more pressing issues than
decomissioning old stuff.
As business owner launching
new stuff is more interesting
than shutting down old things.
Dependencies
Technical – human - commercial
unknown– undocumented

30. What can you do?
• Have a current application inventory
• Including metrics
• Track technical debt
• Know who knows: Human and technical
dependenices.

31. What can you do?
• Financing of the disposal as part of
the overall project scope
• Element of non-functional
requirements, e.g., with tenders
• Element of the business case

32. What can you do?
Use and teach design elements such as:
• High attention to interfaces and data. Who
owns data, who owns interface?
• Applications need to be able to export
data in a system-neutral way
• Applications need to collect and report
usage analytics
• Remove unneeded/idle application parts
as soon as possible

35. Information
Technology
Electricity
Heat
Benefit
Hardware Software