Legacy software are programs and applications that were developed in most cases to fill a particular business need, at the time of implementation, and through years of use, they have become part of the integral business environment. Users are familiar with the look and feel of the system, and are reluctant to change, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it!” is a common enough theme. The problem is that as the software world has developed and more and more business and institutions are finding support for legacy systems, to be unreliable and indeed a diminishing resource, the costs of support can be truly staggering. Indeed, there is a real shortage of programmers and developers who can write a software solution from scratch, document it, de-bug it, develop it, test it, and finally deliver it; in addition modern computer systems may not be able to handle the old software, so older computers are used to run the applications, typically, operating systems like UNIX. Although lightning fast and reliable, will tend to diminish as the “Windows World” gets more powerful, users want the power of Linux, but want the look and feel of their old software.
