New IT-based business processes can challenge legacy strategies as severely as investments in multi-tasking machine tools challenge a plant full of old, conventional machine tools.
Fortunately for IT departments, there is a way when updating computerized business systems to capture legacy value, says computer science professor Willem-Jan van den Heuvel.
His methodology is based on three building blocks: reverse engineering, which allows legacy systems to be componentized; forward engineering, which derives a set of business components from requirements of the new business processes; and alignment of new business processes and componentized legacy systems.
CTO Jeff Sutherland of PatientKeeper Inc. recommends the book for CIOs, system architects, designers and developers working with distributed system and legacy components.