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Is there a faster way to remove the legacy burden?

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VoicenData Bureau
New Update
Abhay Kumar

By Abhay Kumar, Regional Vice President, Asia Pacific, Amdocs

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Our industry is one of the fastest changing in the world with new and exciting network technologies, devices, services and end-user experiences being introduced at an ever increasing pace. It is therefore somewhat surprising that to enable this, service providers are still heavily dependent on legacy systems. And while the majority recognize that this is negatively impacting their business, only a small fraction are actually in the process of implementing related improvement programs.

According to a new research conducted for Amdocs by research firm Coleman Parkes, 65% of service providers in

developing Asian markets have a medium to heavy presence of legacy systems within their IT environments, with 78% reporting legacy systems in core areas.

The research further found that while 72% of service providers in these markets plan to invest in improvement programs to address this within the next two years, none have actually done so to date. In comparison, global percentage of service providers already rolling out legacy improvement programs stands on 21%, with another 54% planning to do so within the next two years. Is there a faster way forward? Plans to outsource are significant

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Service providers are considering different solutions to address their legacy situation. These include software- and services-based solutions, targeting a full-stack transformation or optimization of existing systems, leveraging internal or external resources (e.g. managed services vendors).

The research shows that plans to outsource legacy environments that support core BSS areas such as billing, CRM and ordering are significant, with an average of 47% of respondents in developing Asian markets stating that their companies are already outsourcing all or part of their operations in these areas, and a further 24% indicating that they plan to.

Notably, 100% of the respondents said that for this purpose, their companies prefer to use the same managed services vendor that is currently supporting their non-legacy environments.

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The latest in IT managed services innovation. The latest advancements in IT services to address the need for legacy systems optimization leverages innovative technology through multi-dimensional data analysis. This technology compiles and analyzes data from across software and hardware components, as well as business and organizational processes, focusing on addressing predefined business goals and KPIs.

Coupled with an incremental change approach, this technology supports gradual implementation of system and process enhancements, data rationalization, automation and decommission, which reduces implementation risk while improving business agility and TCO.

Existing industry case studies, where service providers used this approach, have shown a reduction of up to 30% in operational costs, as well as dramatic improvements in service quality. This included, for example, a 70% reduction in billing defects and 60% reduction in billing cycle time.

Heavy presence of legacy systems results in dependency on old technologies and difficulty in adoption of new ones.

These are the main technical challenges for service providers in developing Asian markets as reported by 64% and 57% of respondents, respectively. From a business perspective, key challenges include the ability to align IT capabilities with business needs and deliver on customer experience expectations, as reported by 64% and 57% of respondents respectively.

To address this situation, it is therefore incumbent upon service provider CIOs to quickly address their legacy situation. A strategy that leverages IT services, especially when delivered by a managed services provider with vast experience in the communications domain, that can also offer the latest innovation with clear SLAs and KPIs, can help achieve the necessary, immediate improvements that will place them more favorably in the face of heightened competition.

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