Tips to Start Simplifying Your Application Portfolio
By Julie Fouque, Vice President of Marketing
If you’re responsible for application lifecycle management, you know that every application has a lifespan. Sometimes applications become obsolete because more modern technology surpasses them. Other times applications might become redundant in your portfolio, such as following a merger or acquisition when an acquired company switches to the parent company’s preferred systems. Or, you may find that trends like shifting away from on-premise systems to cloud options are causing your portfolio to evolve.
Over time, you may gather a number of outdated or redundant systems. In most cases, these systems remain active (even if only in read-only mode), because there’s data on them that must be kept for regulatory or strategic business purposes.
However, ignoring aging or redundant systems isn’t where anyone wants to be. Aging and unsupported systems increase the risk of data loss, and the licensing, maintenance, and support costs can balloon over time to consume a significant portion of valuable IT budget.
Instead, many IT departments are taking the proactive step to archive data from these systems so they can decommission them. Not only is this a smart data management move, but it allows you to clean up your IT portfolio and free up budget.
If this scenario sounds familiar, you may find these application decommissioning checklists helpful:
- Checklist 1 – Risks & ROI: Tips to determine if you should decommission applications and what the return on investment might be.
- Checklist 2 – Identifying Candidates: How to identify applications that may be candidates for decommissioning.
- Checklist 3 – Getting Started: Some of the details about the hardware and software you’ll need to know before you get started.
If you’d like more tips on application decommissioning, please visit our Resources.
