Companies would not think of requiring employees to converse in Latin, yet many saddle those same employees with similarly archaic languages and database platforms - COBOL, ADABAS, CA-Datacom, CA-IDMS. Breaking the bonds of the past is not simply a desired course of action; it is a necessity for competing in today's unforgiving marketplace. Instantaneous data access, multiple operating platforms, global networks, browser-based user interfaces are but a few of the demands businesses place on the information technology organization. The migration to modernity is no longer a technology choice, but a bottom-line business decision.
The key benefits of moving a legacy application to relational technology include:
Access to data by the users of the application without expensive programming support. Intuitive, COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) tools can be used to easily interrogate data, create reports and generally provide convenient access.
Provide the infrastructure to "WEBify" the application - a relational platform is a key requirement
Elimination of expensive and often redundant legacy database licenses
The potential elimination of a hardware platform
Enabling the organization to migrate its technical staff to newer technologies
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