doing devops with legacy systems

www.ranger4.comoptimising the flow from idea to value realisation

WEBCASTDoing DevOps with Legacy Systems

With Helen Beal and Ryan Dobson


Agenda

1. What is legacy?

2. Why is it a challenge?

3. What are the solutions?

4. How can Ranger4 help?


What is legacy?


Wikipedia

“In computing, a legacy system is an old method,

technology, computer system, or application program, "of,

relating to, or being a previous or outdated computer

system.” Often a pejorative term, referencing a system as

"legacy" means that it paved the way for the standards that

would follow it. This can also imply that the system is out of

date or in need of replacement.”


Why is legacy a challenge?


Wikipedia: Problems with Legacy• “Legacy systems are considered to be potentially problematic by some software engineers for several reasons (for example, see Bisbal et

al., 1999).

• If legacy software runs on only antiquated hardware, the cost of maintaining the system may eventually outweigh the cost of replacing

both the software and hardware unless some form of emulation or backward compatibility allows the software to run on new hardware.

• These systems can be hard to maintain, improve, and expand because there is a general lack of understanding of the system; the staff

who were experts on it have retired or forgotten what they knew about it, and staff who entered the field after it became "legacy" never

learned about it in the first place. This can be worsened by lack or loss of documentation. Comair airline company fired its CEO in 2004

due to the failure of an antiquated legacy crew scheduling system that ran into a limitation not known to anyone in the company.

• Legacy systems may have vulnerabilities in older operating systems or applications due to lack of security patches being available or

applied. There can also be production configurations that cause security problems. These issues can put the legacy system at risk of

being compromised by attackers or knowledgeable insiders.

• Integration with newer systems may also be difficult because new software may use completely different technologies. Integration across

technology is quite common in computing, but integration between newer technologies and substantially older ones is not common. There

may simply not be sufficient demand for integration technology to be developed. Some of this "glue" code is occasionally developed by

vendors and enthusiasts of particular legacy technologies.

• Budgetary constraints often lead corporations to not address the need of replacement or migration of a legacy system. However,

companies often don’t consider the increasing supportability costs (people, software and hardware, all mentioned above) and do not take

into consideration the enormous loss of capability or business continuity if the legacy system were to fail. Once these considerations are

well understood, then based on the proven ROI of a new, more secure, updated technology stack platform is not as costly as the

alternative - and the budget is found.”


You are not alone“38% pointed out that they had a mix of legacy and modern applications, i.e. a brownfield environment.

This created complexity in terms of deployment strategies and endpoints, toolchain, etc.”


Pace-Layered Application Strategy:

One Approach Doesn’t Fit All

10

Systems of Innovation

Systems of Differentiation

Systems of Record

+

-

Ch

ange

_

+

Go

vernan

ce

DevOps

Traditional

Source: Gartner - Pace-Layered Application Strategy

This is also where “variable speed IT” can be applied.


Bimodal IT“The likes of Gartner have come up with constructs such as

two-speed delivery to help deal with this legacy challenge. In my view, there is a problem with the idea of dual-speed

because it is based on a wrong analogy to start with — that of allowing vehicles to move at different speeds depending on

whether you are on the motorway or a city road. That analogy works well for traffic management scenarios but not for complex IT architectures we see in the enterprise. The

dependencies across the systems in the enterprise landscape are just too intricate and too tightly coupled to be defined using such a binary logic. In my experience, I find that many Agile and

DevOps transformations hit the roadblock and never achieve the desired levels of productivity and effectiveness because of an oversimplified view of these complex dependencies across

legacy and open systems.”


What are the solutions?


ORGANISATION

INTERACTIONS

AUTOMATION


ORGANISATION


“There are no legacy systems; just legacy

thinking.”


INTERACTIONS


AUTOMATION


Justin Dean, VP TechOps

“Over the years, we have been extracting these legacy technologies by adding APIs to modernise the interface to our ticketing engines and

platforms. We wanted to get them out quickly. To do that, we need to touch a lot of systems. This has driven us to DevOps. For us, it really

started with DevOps. Part of our transformation was to focus on delivering business value faster and delivering more of it, and the

driver was speed to market of product.”

Benefits

• Removal of legacy bottlenecks and constraints

• Improvement of speed to market

• Outcome and business value focussed

• Authority distributed, greater autonomy

• Friction reduced through self-service

“There is less

emphasis on the

amount of work being

done, and more on the

outcome.”


C Automation LMS


How can Ranger4 help?


Organisation Interactions Automation

• Be agile• Small batch• Shift left• Focus on flow

• Microservices• Build quality in• Automate –

what’s rote

• Experimental• Collaborative• Blame free• Distribute

authority

Summary: Legacy in DevOps


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