A legacy application is a piece of software, method or infrastructure that is old and that has usually been superseded by a newer version.
Legacy applications are often kept in production longer than they should because they are carrying out an important task, the infrastructure is outdated so newer versions wont function or because it commercially isn’t viable to upgrade or re-write.
With the complex job roles and working environments within the Nuclear sectors, legacy applications are very common. The risks are increased in this sector due to the increased work demands and increased security risks.
The Nuclear sector have many applications from software that runs intensive calculations, to project management applications like Primavera.
When Legacy applications are left in a live environment, this often means the infrastructure it runs from is also out of date.
This can cause issues as often patches and updates are not available after a certain point in time. This will mean businesses are at risk with:
If you are running a legacy application, or even a software application that is due an upgrade there are 2 main patches to consider:
Option 1 can be expensive, and it can also mean a big impact within the company on down time, user training requirements and then even more upgraded infrastructure to support the new solution.
Option 2 allows a Legacy application, or any software application to be ‘picked up’ and hosted from a secure hosted platform. This means that application is ‘encapsulated’ and even if old technology, can be ran on and deployed over newer IT & operating systems.
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