Shut down old systems when companies merge or taken over – archive data using Chronos

For company mergers and takeovers, the solution Chronos from CSP GmbH & Co. KG provides a large contribution to futuristic IT infrastructure by decommissioning old applications. When companies grow and change, the organizational challenges are normally also includes uniform software.

For old legacy systems with an historical emergent complexity of function, the question arises: Continue to maintain, migrate or shut down? As a rule, with regard to consideration of the costs as well as the pragmatic point of view, an Application Retirement is recommended, as supported by Chronos by its much-proven concept. With the software, old data remains permanently accessible, independent of the legacy system, so that no maintenance and further development is required.

Thereby, the keeping of compliance specifications for judicial-relevant data is adhered to. In addition, the software, which archives the complete databases unchanged, also sustainably reduces the costs: "The trend is towards shutting down old systems in order to store the data in another central and independent application for research. Subsequently, no more licences and support are required for old applications. Also, no more specialists for the old technologies and programming languages must be employed, who are difficult to find in the market anyway", Heike Johannes who, as project manager, also supervises numerous Application-Retirement projects at CSP, mentioned is another benefit to the companies.

If a merger of companies, for example, banks and insurance, is imminent, their objective is to compensate for the complexities of the different technical platforms and interfaces. Only with the necessary flexibility can the IT contribute to the planned appreciation. Experience indicates that old systems that have grown over many years often no longer correspond to the requirements of the user, as well as the current security concepts. If they must remain in use, undue costs are incurred for the management of data, hardware and software, as well as in the processing centre. Often, the manufacturer no longer supports the maintenance, also as stan-dard and only individual maintenance agreements exist in order to keep such systems in oper-ation. Frequently, the necessary hardware has also reached the end of its life cycle. Migration as an alternative option would normally result in much higher investment. Thereby, in all probability, the result does not relate to the cost. Furthermore, it is statistically proven that only a fraction of old data must be accessed. The largest part of data in the old systems is that which must only be kept for reasons of compliance.

For application retirement using Chronos, the databases of the old application is archived in an open storage format as revision-safe. Thereby, the readability of the data is ensured until the end of the specified time for archiving. At the press of a knob, the user can research old data in this independent system. In the event of judicial verification procedure, all relevant information is available. "Merging companies cannot come to a better decision than to send aged, old systems into retirement with the aid of Chronos. The application Retirement is not expensive and is efficient. A further additional advantage is that the software can be used for archiving current existing data of the new systems, in order to conform to the statutory requirements. Thus, further appreciation and potential for efficiency is activated within the company", commented Heike Johannes.