Solutions » De-risk your application portfolio

Many managers and users estimate that their existing applications will last for between three and seven years. In reality, systems stay in use a lot longer, sometimes for thirty years. The functionality of information systems changes less significantly than often imagined. Practice shows that over five year an organization will retain eighty percent and more of its current functionality and many new systems that replace existing ones will actually overlap at least eighty per cent in functionality and detail. Most information intensive organizations face a portfolio of applications with a long dated history from times where application management methodologies were still to be developped.

These applications often represent sources of risk:

• internal support has become scarce
• support for underlying technology is not anymore evident
• support by third parties is expensive
• Difficulties to retain knowledge as key personnel is promoted or moves on
• Inability to guarantee availability even for stable applications
• Poor or disparate documentation

The replacement of large and complex systems that are often critical for the business process is can however be even more risky and expensive. Most organizations don't even dare entertain the idea of completely new systems given the risk. This means that the need for innovation grows from within the existing situation.

To de-risk your application portfolio, Osiatis can help:

• assess you application portfolio and identify the risks
• measure the maintainability, complexity and testability of the code
• design a transition and transformation plan to gradually take control again of the application
• provide a cost estimate to externalize support