Legacy systems are typically the mission critical systems that run at the core of an organization's business and, accordingly, the business logic and data embedded within them offer tremendous value. The problem has always been that organizations have found it either difficult or impossible to modernize and reuse these legacy applications. While many approaches have been tried, most leveraged technologies that were proprietary in nature and consequently resulted in integration
efforts that were point-to-point and not reusable.
But things are changing. Today, many organizations are discovering the value of modernizing their legacy systems using the principles and techniques of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Web services and open standards offer the potential to modernize legacy systems in a meaningful way. In addition, a new generation of technology and tools are making legacy modernization projects simpler and faster than ever before.
