In August 2008, NIIT Technologies Banking, Financial Services and Insurance Team joined forces with IT Industry analysts Datamonitor for a CBR (Computing Business Review) Dining Club event, at the award winning Don Restaurant, based in the City of London.

On the agenda were two key topics: The current state of affairs of legacy systems and the threats posed to organisations, and: The options available to proactively and effectively manage a legacy portfolio.

With a full room of senior executives from companies such as Aviva, Visa Europe, Catlin, Lloyds TSB and Schroders (to name a few), lively discussions ensued with two speakers from NIIT Technologies providing their viewpoint on these issues. Based on his knowledge and experience of assisting various clients to overcome the Legacy Systems challenges, Amit Kumar Chakraborty who is a veteran at NIIT Technologies commented: “70 per cent of the world’s mission-critical applications reside on legacy systems. Organisations should not underestimate the importance of managing their legacy plans correctly”.

Completing the list of keynote speakers was independent analyst, Alan Rodger of the Butler Group who contributed his thoughts on how the industry was gearing up to address the issue. Alan’s experience in the IT industry has been for over 20 years and he has been involved in IT development and implementation projects, with user and supplier organisations. His experience includes working on business applications financial services where he worked with many large user and technology organisations as an employee, or in an independent consultant capacity, providing the analysts view on the importance of legacy management.

On a lighter note, while commenting on the benefits and strengths of Legacy Systems, Alan said, “Removing ‘B’ from ‘COBOL’ results in ‘COOL’”.

For further information on how NIIT Technologies can assist you to effectively manage a legacy portfolio, contact marketing@niit-tech.co.uk