Businesses reluctant to ditch ageing legacy systems

More than two-thirds of UK organisations admit they are running parts of their infrastructure on ageing legacy technology that is more than 10 years old, according to a new survey.

The poll of 150 IT directors found 70 per cent are still using legacy systems put in before 1996 to run parts of their business.

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All of those with these old legacy systems said they are looking to modernise their technology infrastructure in 2007 but only 13 per cent will adopt a 'rip and replace' approach. Instead a third (34 per cent) of the IT directors said they are looking at using service-oriented architecture (SOA) and 29 per cent will use legacy modernisation to improve their infrastructure.

Tim Holyoake, senior consultant at Software AG, which carried out the research, said SOA can be used to give legacy systems a facelift without having to undergo a costly "full body transplant".

Almost a third of respondents to a silicon.com reader poll last year also admitted to having kit more than 10 years old, with another third using IT equipment between five and 10 years old.

IT directors said the age of kit is irrelevant if it still does the job effectively while old equipment can be valuable as a test environment.

Paul Broome, IT director at 192.com, said: "Old servers can be great test harnesses for development, beta and staging. Our motto here is 'if it ain't broke fix it until it is'."