Application Modernisation

The financials sector is almost certainly the best example of an industry that is caught between equally demanding extremes - the need to operate in a thorough and audit-worthy manner, ensuring compliance to legislation, and also robust security, and at the opposite end of the scale, the demand to keep increasingly demanding customers satisfied through the rapid and flexible provision of new services and products.

Although financials provide excellent examples of market issues, the Application Modernisation market is a truly horizontal one, as every organisation that has become dependent upon long-established software and systems is faced by the same problems - the differences between industries are of degree, rather than of type.

Whether organisations like it or not, they are forced to acknowledge that core applications are still corporate assets, albeit ones that require some work to restore them to their former glory. It is also the case that the systems upon which these applications reside also have the potential to continue to add value to the business, which brings us to the issue of the mainframe. Butler Group believes that market recognition is once again growing that the mainframe is a significant enterprise asset, rather than a burden. Another important element in the gradual change in corporate thinking about the mainframe lies in the fact that it is a very cost-effective platform for running Linux - this is, of course, another reason why IBM is unlikely to neglect the mainframe side of its business.

These factors combine to present businesses with a clear requirement for integration between a variety of existing and contemporary applications and operational platforms, and in the short term at least this demand will be met by the implementation of Web services in connecting roles between the diverse elements of the organisational infrastructure. These additional layers will be used because the developmental costs and operational risks are low, and vendors providing support for their creation will prosper.

Long term, however, the only real solution to ageing enterprise systems will be modernisation and the use of invasive approaches and technologies. The future of this market lies with change management and the renewal of enterprise applications, as this is the only means by which they can truly be future-proofed.

Der vollständige Bericht kann bei der Butler Group bestellt werden.