One of the busiest parts of Flatirons’ business is our work with customers on application decommissioning—the process of identifying outdated, unsupported legacy applications and moving their data to a central repository where it is both secure and accessible for as long as required. Application decommissioning is largely driven by regulatory requirements that mandate organizations retain data for specified time periods. This is coupled with the critical need to optimize or offload costly legacy applications that syphon valuable IT budget away from other strategic initiatives—most notably those around digital business.

As John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner, said in HealthData Management, “Concurrently, the need to invest in IT to support digital business is more urgent than ever. Business leaders know that they need to become digital businesses or face irrelevance in a digital world. To make that happen, leaders are engaging in tough cost optimization efforts in some areas to fund digital business in others.”

He goes on to say, “…the savings from legacy system optimization and enhancements are being redirected to fund digital initiatives…. It’s about doing more with the same funds.”

Flatirons couldn’t agree more. We’re in the middle of the IT optimization wave, currently working actively with healthcare organizations across the U.S. to execute application decommissioning projects, such as:

  • Consolidating data spread over hundreds of applications into one easily accessible and unified archive
  • Retiring home-grown applications to support new EPIC systems
  • Establishing common platforms for providers bringing new practices into their networks
  • Retiring legacy systems to simplify IT infrastructures following mergers and acquisitions
  • …all while helping organizations recoup costs so they can redirect budget to critical business needs.

As Bob Violino states, “The need to spend on digital business initiatives in a time when revenue growth does not support runaway IT budgets is forcing more organizations to optimize as a first step.”

That first step in optimizing your IT infrastructure may likely be decommissioning legacy applications.

Learn more about application decommissioning.