Sign In Create Account Cloud Enterprise Multi-cloud Strategies Won’t Work With Legacy Tech – Here’s Why Rob Anderson VP Of Marketing And Product Of Application Modernization, Advanced December 1, 2021 As organizations adopt multi-cloud strategies to remain compatible with modern business demands, there’s minimal time to spare for added issues that legacy technology brings. Rob Anderson, VP of marketing and product, application modernization, Advanced, breaks down why outdated applications like mainframes are holding organizations back from reaping the benefits of multi-cloud agility. Over 90% of organizations have a multi-cloud strategy in place. With advantages like vendor-specific products and agnosticism, simplified execution of regulatory compliance requirements, greater resilience, automation, and extended geographical presence, it’s a no-brainer for companies born into the cloud to pursue this strategy. Unfortunately, the newest tools and architectures being developed with cloud-native concepts are trending away from traditional IT. They can’t be replicated through the pre-cloud tech used by the majority of enterprises that still rely on legacy systems, and this trend shows no sign of slowing down. As a result, there’s a growing divergence between innovations and backward compatibility. As multi-cloud continues to evolve into a mainstream best practice for organizations across all industries, any limitations that legacy code and infrastructure in its original form present will grow into detrimental liabilities such as outright incompatibility. To overcome hurdles around app development, infrastructure management and connectivity, and fully experience the powerful benefits of a multi-cloud strategy, organizations need to modernize old, outdated systems like the mainframe. Shrinking IT Legacy Knowledge Enterprises have been grappling with the shrinking IT talent pool for years. However, organizations that still rely on legacy systems such as the mainframe are feeling the burn most acutely. The talent capable of effectively running these systems, and those who specifically wrote the code, are retiring or leaving their positions at an increasing rate, making the technologies they once managed “black boxes” of undocumented information. While this has enabled an opportunity for new and emerging IT talent to enter these posts, the reality is that a large majority aren’t as familiar with languages and databases that make up legacy systems. Some simply don’t have an interest in taking jobs that require those skill sets. According to Reuters, 18.8% of COBOL developers are over the age of 55, and 60.5% are over 45. The new generation was born from the digital age, taught the power of abstraction and cloud-friendly languages, and harbor little interest in the likes of COBOL, CA-Gen, CA-Telon, or Assembler. It’s a problem that’s driving 89% of organizations to say they’re concerned about having access to the right IT talent to maintain and manage their legacy systems. Beyond cross-training IT teams and hiring freelancers, the solution to address the lack of IT talent lies in modernizing technologies to keep up with today’s business environment. See More: Hybrid Cloud: First Step Towards System Integration Securing and Managing Multi-cloud Environments With Legacy Code While multi-cloud brings enhanced connectivity to an enterprise, it also brings added complexity. To reduce complexity, improve speed and agility, enable multi-cloud networking and secure connectivity between carriers and cloud providers, the secure access service edge (SASE) model is becoming an increasingly popular solution to better secure and connect multi-cloud environments. With cloud-native security functions such as secure web gateways, cloud access security brokers and zero-trust virtual private network (VPN) overlay, SASE makes it easy to scale and automate cloud-agnostic connectivity while increasing security. Gartner projects SASE to be the future secure networking model that enterprises should aim for. The challenge, however, is that SASE, designed to be cloud-native, can only go so far when it’s used with legacy systems. SASE is just an example of emerging technology that doesn’t account for legacy, but it’s part of a growing trend. Ultimately, the limitations that legacy systems present will grow into liabilities. See More: 7 Multi-Cloud Challenges and How To Overcome Them To Remain Innovative, Agility Is Key Sculpting change and accelerating business growth is a top priority for organizations this next year, according to Gartner. Yet there are still 220 billion lines of COBOL code currently being used in production today, revealing the massive disconnect between the business goals and current practices. The same idea applies to organizations that are embracing multi-cloud but still retaining legacy technology. Today’s emerging cutting-edge tools (like SASE) are increasingly reducing their consideration of compatibility with legacy systems. Code refactoring – altering the code’s internal structure to cloud-native languages, such as Java and C#, without changing its purpose – is the ideal solution for tackling this challenge. To bring unmatched agility and power to cloud deployments, IT leaders need access to updated resources and systems that can keep them nimble to better drive innovation in the organization. Refactoring tends to be the optimal method to retain the business logic, functionality and data of legacy systems in multi-cloud environments without the shackles of legacy mainframes and code. Did you find this article helpful? Tell us what you think on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. We’d be thrilled to hear from you. Application Modernization Cloud Computing Multi-Cloud VPN Share This Article: Rob Anderson VP Of Marketing And Product Of Application Modernization, Advanced Rob Anderson is Vice President of Marketing and Product for Application Modernization at Advanced. Rob's career has been marked by building and cultivating teams and products focused on accelerating innovation and enabling digital transformation across the telecommunications, software development, and application modernization industries. He also serves as endurance events chair on the board of directors for the Western Carolinas Chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. He graduated from Clemson University with a Bachelor of Science in Technical Marketing and Computer Science, is an avid runner, hiker, cryptocurrency enthusiast, and enjoys storytelling and spending time with his family. Stay Ahead! 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