Assessing Legacy Software Systems: Existence, Challenges, Impact, and Migration Strategies in Organizational Contexts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26713/cma.v17i1.3513Keywords:
Legacy Software Systems (LSSs), Modern Software Systems (MSSs), Technological Challenges, Organizational Impact, System Modernization, Migration Strategies, Goal-Question- Metric (GQM)Abstract
Legacy software systems remain deeply embedded in modern organizations, often serving as the backbone of mission-critical operations. Despite their importance, these systems introduce significant challenges related to security, scalability, maintainability, and integration with modern technologies. This study provides an empirical examination of legacy software systems based on responses from 200 IT specialists across public and private organizations. The findings reveal high dependency on aging systems, widespread technical and organizational challenges, and substantial impact on business workflows and digital transformation efforts. The study also highlights modernization strategies currently adopted by organizations, including cloud migration, reengineering, and incremental refactoring. Based on these insights, this research proposes the need for structured evaluation models and future application of the Goal–Question–Metric (GQM) paradigm to measure the depth and breadth of legacy software system dependency. The results contribute to a deeper understanding of legacy software system realities and offer guidance for sustainable modernization practices.
Downloads
References
[1] M. Ali, S. Hussain, M. Ashraf and K. Paracha, Addressing software related issues on legacy systems — A review, International Journal of Scientific and Technology Research 9(3) (2020), 3738 – 3742.
[2] W. Aljedaibi and S. Khamis, Towards measuring the project management process during large scale software system implementation phase, The ISC International Journal of Information Security 11(3) (2019), 161 – 172, DOI: 10.22042/isecure.2019.11.0.21.
[3] H. K. A. Bakar, R. Razali and D. I. Jambari, Implementation phases in modernisation of legacy systems, in: 6th International Conference on Research and Innovation in Information Systems (ICRIIS, Johor Bahru, Malaysia), pp. 1 – 6, (2019), DOI: 10.1109/ICRIIS48246.2019.9073628.
[4] K. Bennett, Legacy systems: Coping with success, IEEE Software 12(1) (1995), 19 – 23, DOI: 10.1109/52.363157.
[5] J. Crotty and I. Horrocks, Managing legacy system costs: A case study of a meta-assessment model to identify solutions in a large financial services company, Applied Computing and Informatics 13(2) (2017), 175 – 183, DOI: 10.1016/j.aci.2016.12.001.
[6] A. Dedeke, Improving legacy-system sustainability: A systematic approach, IT Professional 14(1) (2012), 38 – 43, DOI: 10.1109/MITP.2012.10.
[7] M. F. Gholami, F. Daneshgar, G. Beydoun and F. Rabhi, Challenges in migrating legacy software systems to the cloud – an empirical study, Information Systems 67 (2017), 100 – 113, DOI: 10.1016/j.is.2017.03.008.
[8] M. H. Hasan, M. H. Osman, N. I. Admodisastro and M. S. Muhammad, Legacy systems to cloud migration: A review from the architectural perspective, Journal of Systems and Software 202 (2023), 111702, DOI: 10.1016/j.jss.2023.111702.
[9] S. M. Hussain, S. N. Bhatti and M. F. U. Rasool, Legacy system and ways of its evolution, in: International Conference on Communication Technologies (ComTech, Rawalpindi, Pakistan, 2017), pp. 56 – 59, (2017), DOI: 10.1109/COMTECH.2017.8065750.
[10] Z. Irani, R. M. Abril, V. Weerakkody, A. Omar and U. Sivarajah, The impact of legacy systems on digital transformation in European public administration: Lesson learned from a multi case analysis, Government Information Quarterly 39(2) (2022), article 101613, DOI: 10.1016/j.giq.2022.101784.
[11] R. Khadka, Revisiting Legacy Software System Modernization, Ph.D Thesis, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands (2016), URL: https://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hage0101/downloads/ravikhadka16revisitinglegacysoftwaresystemmodernization-phd.pdf.
[12] R. Khadka, B. V. Batlajery, A. M. Saeidi, S. Jansen and J. Hage, How do professionals perceive legacy systems and software modernization?, in: Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE’14, Hyderabad, India), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, pp. 36 – 47 (2014), DOI: 10.1145/2568225.2568318.
[13] S. Khamis and W. Aljedaibi, A framework for measuring critical success factors of large-scale software systems, International Journal of Computer Engineering & Technology 7(6) (2016), 71 – 82.
[14] A. M. Langer, Legacy systems and integration, in: Guide to Software Development: Designing and Managing the Life Cycle, Springer, London, pp. 179 – 213, (2016), DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4471-6799-0_10.
[15] A. de Lucia, A. R. Andrea, E. Fasolino and E. Pompelle, A decisional framework for legacy system management, in: Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM, Florence, Italy, 2001), pp. 642 – 651, (2001), DOI: 10.1109/ICSM.2001.972781.
[16] R. K. Mallidi, M. Sharma and J. Singh, Legacy digital transformation: TCO and ROI analysis, International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering Systems 12(3) (2021), 163 – 170, DOI: 10.32985/ijeces.12.3.5.
[17] J. Marchant, C. Tjortjis and M. Turega, A metric of confidence in requirements gathered from legacy systems: Two industrial case studies, in: Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR’06, Bari, Italy), pp. 7 – 12, (2006), DOI: 10.1109/CSMR.2006.5.
[18] F. Ponce, G. Márquez and H. Astudillo, Migrating from monolithic architecture to microservices: A rapid review, in: 2019 38th International Conference of the Chilean Computer Science Society (SCCC) (Concepcion, Chile, 2019), pp. 1 – 7 (2019), DOI: 10.1109/SCCC49216.2019.8966423.
[19] M. Rahgozar and F. Oroumchian, A transformational approach for legacy systems’ evolution, in: WSEAS Transactions on Systems 2(2) (2003), 407.
[20] C. S. Ramos, K. M. Oliveira and N. Anquetil, Legacy software evaluation model for outsourced maintainer, Eighth European Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR 2004, Tampere, Finland), pp. 48 – 57, (2004), DOI: 10.1109/CSMR.2004.1281405.
[21] J. Ransom, I. Sommerville and I. Warren, A method for assessing legacy systems for evolution, in: Proceedings of the Second Euromicro Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering, 1998, pp. 128 – 134 (1998), DOI: 10.1109/CSMR.1998.665778.
[22] H. M. Sneed, Integrating legacy software into a service-oriented architecture, in: Conference on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR’06, Bari, Italy), pp. 1 – 14, (2006), DOI: 10.1109/CSMR.2006.28.
[23] I. Sommerville, Software Engineering, 10th edition, Pearson, 810 pages (2016).
[24] M. Srinivas, G. Ramakrishna, K. R. Rao and E. S. Babu, Analysis of legacy system in software application development: A comparative survey, International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering 6(1) (2016), 292 – 300, DOI: 10.11591/ijece.v6i1.pp292-297.
[25] I. Warren, The Renaissance of Legacy Systems: Method Support for Software-System Evolution, 1st edition, Springer, xiii + 182 pages (1999), DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4471-0817-7.
[26] N. Wirth, A brief history of software engineering, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 30(3) (2008), 32 – 39, DOI: 10.1109/MAHC.2008.33.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a CCAL that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
