Decommissioning legacy systems - reducing risks, costs & unlocking the value of long-term archival content
Many organizations still store long-term records (7+ years to decades) in legacy systems, shared drives, or operational platforms like EDRMS and CMS. These environments were never designed for preservation and now pose growing operational, financial, and compliance risks.
Unsupported applications, aging infrastructure, and long-term files sitting in day-to-day systems undermine data integrity, accessibility, and trust.
Why It Matters: The Four Key Risks to Long-Term Information
- Data Loss & Corruption
Legacy hardware fails, file formats become unreadable, and unsupported systems degrade. Even modern operational systems expose long-term files to accidental deletion, tampering, or version drift. Software upgrades and migrations add further risk, including metadata loss and bit-level corruption.
- Inaccessible & Siloed ‘Dark Archives’
Critical records often sit in disconnected systems that few people understand or can access. This slows legal response, impedes operational decisions, and creates reliance on IT teams or individuals with institutional knowledge.
- Compliance Exposure
Long-term retention requires integrity, auditability, and controlled change. Legacy and operational systems allow files to be modified or moved without a clear chain of custody, making consistent compliance difficult.
- High, Hidden Costs
Maintaining aging systems, or storing archive content inside operational platforms, drives unnecessary spend on hardware, storage, licenses, and support.
A Strategic Path Forward: Aggregate & Preserve
Decommissioning legacy systems provides the opportunity to reduce cost and risk while establishing a sustainable enterprise-wide approach to long-term information.
The answer lies in aggregating files into a single, purpose-built Digital Preservation archive that ensures long-term records remain readable, trustworthy, and accessible.
A Digital Preservation archive provides:
- Guaranteed data integrity through automated fixity checks
- Long-term readability with automated format migration
- Migration of obsolete file formats to the latest readable versions (previously unreadable records in legacy systems can be brought back to life and their value unlocked).
- Standardized metadata for rapid discovery
- Immutable, auditable records for regulatory confidence
- Centralized governance across all historic content
Enterprise value for IT leaders
For IT leaders, decommissioning legacy systems is no longer a maintenance task, it’s a strategic lever. Consolidating long-term records into a Digital Preservation archive strengthens the organization’s risk posture, streamlines the technology estate, and frees IT from the hidden drag caused by outdated systems. The result is a more secure, modern, and cost-efficient information landscape that supports both current operations and future digital initiatives.
- Reduce Risk - Ensure long-term records remain intact, readable, and tamper-proof, independent of aging systems, user error, or unpredictable software upgrades.
- Cut Cost - Eliminate spend on legacy infrastructure, licenses, and support while reducing storage pressure on operational platforms.
- Increase Data Value - Turn siloed archives into a unified, searchable asset that supports analytics, AI, and enterprise-wide decision-making.
- Accelerate Transformation - By removing legacy constraints, IT gains the flexibility to modernize applications, move to cloud-first architectures, and deliver new digital capabilities faster.
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