"If it was that easy to get off these systems, most CIOs would havedone it already," says Dale Vecchio, research director of applicationdevelopment for Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner.

"The only way I'll address renovating my legacy systems is if theystop enabling the business," says John White, vice president of IT atParker Hannifin, a Cleveland-based manufacturer. "My barometer is theROI," he says.

While White's rule of thumb is widely held, more and more businessexecutives are coming to grips with the fact that the Internet hasplaced demands on companies and computing systems - such as real-timeorder processing and managing high-bandwidth demands - that most legacyapplications just can't handle. CIOs know this better than anyoneelse. But right now would be the worst time for an organization tobegin a major infrastructure face-lift, wouldn't it? The economy is inclampdown mode. Enterprises are struggling to find cash for the mostbasic projects. Only the nuttiest CIO would argue for spending moneyon infrastructure, and only the most irresponsible CEO would approvethe expenditure. Right?

Actually, not right. In fact, spending money to keep legacyapplications going is a mistake. Assigning personnel to keep legacyapplications running is a big mistake. Making business plans based onlegacy applications is an enormous mistake.

Despite all apparent evidence to the contrary, right now is the idealtime to either pull the plug (which would be ideal) or overhaul legacyapplications. And a whole roster of major American enterprises areseizing this opportunity to get a jump on their competitors bymodernizing (connecting their legacy system to a Web front end) ormigrating their legacy systems to new thin-client-based Web systems.