Customers Face Growing Challenges as Technology Investments Become Obsolete

Accelerating Pace of Change is Driving IT Decision Makers to Adopt New Strategies for Avoiding Legacy “Drag”

ISLANDIA, NY - The accelerating pace of technology change is forcing IT decision-makers to adopt new strategies that keep their existing technology investments from becoming a drag on business value. At the same time, companies are still getting substantial value from systems they have invested in for the last 10-20 years. So they need to proactively plan and manage the lifespan of their investments by both optimizing their existing assets and adopting next generation solutions.

Legacy systems often don’t support cloud, virtualization and/or mobility. They also often lack sufficient compliance and security characteristics. In addition, IT organizations often don’t have the skills necessary to integrate with legacy systems with current technologies. As a result, those systems can limit IT’s ability to resource-efficiently fulfill the relentlessly evolving needs of the business.

An IDC white paper, sponsored by CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA)*, outlines how this issue of accelerated obsolescence can be addressed by an “Engage, Extend, Evolve” strategy:

Technology lifecycle experts engage in a proactive assessment of existing investments and take appropriate measures necessary to enable continued value and avoid legacy “drag.”
Those measures include initiatives that extend the usefulness and value of technologies in their mature phase by upgrading to new versions or adding capabilities to address new requirements.
Those measures also include initiatives that evolve IT so that technologies past their prime can be transformed or migrated to next-gen solutions—facilitated by automation, where possible, in order to mitigate risks and costs.

According to the IDC white paper, “With ever-accelerating technological change, it is tempting to over-focus on ‘what’s new’ and downplay the importance of stable in-place solutions that often supply critical business functions. When such solutions are based on mature or even late stage technologies, IT organizations are faced with real challenges as to how to support and prolong usefulness—including updates and modernization—while planning for eventual transition to newer technologies and operational environments.”

The white paper also calls attention to the CA Technologies Customer Lifecycle Solutions approach, which helps IT organizations address the challenges of operating mature and late stage technologies.

“IT decision-makers are facing some hard choices as they try to shift the allocation of their finite resources from low-value ‘keep-the-lights-on’ tasks to high-impact business innovation,” said Sid Kumar, vice president, Customer Lifecycle Solutions, CA Technologies. “This IDC white paper underscores how important the resolution of legacy systems issues can be in this struggle—and shows that there are practical ways to address the challenge.”

**IDC white paper, sponsored by CA Technologies, Maximizing & Accelerating Value with Technology Lifecycle Planning, April 2013.

About CA Technologies

CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA) provides IT management solutions that help customers manage and secure complex IT environments to support agile business services. Organizations leverage CA Technologies software and SaaS solutions to accelerate innovation, transform infrastructure and secure data and identities, from the data center to the cloud. Learn more about CA Technologies at www.ca.com.

Legal Notices

Copyright © 2013 CA. All Rights Reserved. One CA Plaza, Islandia, N.Y. 11749. All other trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.