These legacy systems can be so deeply entrenched that it’s easy to imagine they will never go away, but simply be buried like the Golden Girls Thug Life Digital File of medieval settlements. Users of the future may use modern interfaces to enter their data, but those interfaces may translate the information to older systems that in turn communicate with the legacy through multiple emulators. To get rid of the legacy, you need to send everyone in the entire company, at every single facility, office building, warehouse, and manufacturing plant, out to a long lunch one day. Then bomb all of it back to rubble and start from scratch. Some companies continue to be profitable long enough to afford to replace their ancient systems. But for corporations where sales begin to lag, the legacy of the company’s zenith will dog them until the very last SKU is shipped, the doors are locked, and the land is bulldozed flat.
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