The data archiving snowball effect: start small and build momentum 

If you continue to house data in expensive, outdated applications, you’re not alone. Seventy percent of the software powering Fortune 500 companies was developed at least 20 years ago. Operating with legacy technology is a situation that often unfolds gradually—with some business systems prioritized for modernization and others left behind. Before long, outdated systems tend to multiply, weighing down IT resources and complicating modernization. 

But there’s a high cost that comes to holding on to obsolete systems—and not just in terms of dollars and cents. As business applications reach the end of their lifecycles, they may require specialized knowledge to maintain, risk downtime if systems break down, and house data that is no longer accessible to users, losing value as the days go on. 

Continuing to run legacy and outdated technology often creates greater risks than rewards. Let’s explore how data archiving solutions help orchestrate the retirement of legacy applications, reducing overhead costs and protecting the data within. 

Removing application friction points with data archiving  

Modernizing legacy systems requires a change in legacy thinking, recognizing where to support ongoing digital transformation, rather than implementing new, siloed replacement technologies.  

Legacy systems typically persist within organizations for one or more reasons. Often, the applications:  

• Hold regulated or business-critical historical data 
• Require specialized (and expensive) skills to maintain 
• Struggle to be upgraded due to outdated underlying technology 
• Are too interconnected across business processes to easily shut down 

As hardware ages and support ends, legacy systems can fail unexpectedly or fall short of modern cybersecurity requirements, increasing operational and compliance risk for organizations. Such scenarios are common and unsustainable, yet also preventable with data archiving for application decommissioning.  

How data archiving reduces friction and enables modernization 

Legacy systems don’t just consume resources; they also introduce friction and delays, and get in the way of modernization efforts, such as cloud migrations, data center consolidations, IT rationalization, and ERP modernization, such as migrating SAP content. 

By migrating legacy data to a modern data archiving platform, organizations can retire systems faster, simplify operations, and free up budget and bandwidth for future-focused innovation.  

Data archiving plays a pivotal role by: 

• Consolidating legacy data into a single, compliant, accessible archive 
• Reducing infrastructure and licensing costs associated with outdated systems
• Maintaining a chain of custody to validate data completeness and compliance 
• Ensuring users retain access to historical data and content  
• Supporting cloud migration and IT modernization initiatives  

Instead of keeping racks of hardware running in an on-premises data center—or maintaining unsupported software just to retain access—organizations can move structured and unstructured information into a data archiving platform. This allows IT teams to retire multiple legacy applications without disrupting business processes. 

The data archiving snowball effect  

Many companies begin by decommissioning just one or two applications, ensuring continued access to archived information. By leaning on experts with proven application decommissioning methods, such as OpenText Professional Services, companies can efficiently address common application decommissioning scenarios. And once that foundation is built, something powerful happens, with each additional application becoming significantly easier. Why?  

• The archiving framework already exists 
• Data models can be reused, adapted, or combined 
• Compliance and reporting workflows are already validated 
• Teams gain confidence and training to add more systems themselves 

As a result, organizations that start often end up decommissioning dozens or even hundreds of legacy systems, saving substantial time and cost while streamlining their IT footprint.  

A modern approach to data archiving for application decommissioning 

OpenText data archiving solutions offer a flexible, cloud-based approach to storing both structured and unstructured data, providing a path to decommission obsolete legacy applications. As a result, organizations can:  

• Compliantly archive information at scale 
• Decommission systems without losing access to historical data 
• Reduce IT spend and operational risk 
• Speed up cloud migration 
• Empower teams through repeatable archiving processes 

Legacy systems may be a reality, but they don’t have to be a roadblock. By starting small and establishing a scalable data archiving strategy, organizations can build momentum—retiring systems faster, reducing costs, and paving the way for true digital transformation.