Application retirement, also called application decommissioning and application sunsetting, is the practice of shutting down
redundant or obsolete business applications while retaining access to the historical
data
In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted ...
.
Legacy application
In computing, a legacy system is an old method, technology, computer system, or application program, "of, relating to, or being a previous or outdated computer system", yet still in use. Often referencing a system as "legacy" means that it paved ...
s are often maintained solely to provide infrequent or sporadic access to data within the application
database
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...
for regulatory or business purposes. With some organizations spending upwards of 75% of their
application software
Application may refer to:
Mathematics and computing
* Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks
** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...
budgets on ongoing
maintenance
Maintenance may refer to:
Biological science
* Maintenance of an organism
* Maintenance respiration
Non-technical maintenance
* Alimony, also called ''maintenance'' in British English
* Champerty and maintenance, two related legal doctrine ...
,
A Practical Guide for Retiring Applications by Informatica (2009)
application retirement can deliver significant cost savings.
The act of application retirement usually involves migrating data from the legacy application database
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...
to another data repository
A data library, data archive, or data repository is a collection of numeric and/or geospatial data sets for secondary use in research. A data library is normally part of a larger institution (academic, corporate, scientific, medical, government ...
or archive
An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located.
Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...
store that can be accessed independently using industry standard
''Industry Standard'' is the sixth studio album by the Dixie Dregs, released in 1982. This was the second of two albums released under the moniker The Dregs, and is their only album featuring vocals (by Alex Ligertwood of Santana and Patrick Si ...
reporting or business intelligence
Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical pr ...
tools. Application retirement allows IT departments within companies to reduce the software, hardware and resources required to manage legacy data.
See also
*End-of-life (product)
An end-of-life product (EOL product) is a product at the end of the product lifecycle which prevents users from receiving updates, indicating that the product is at the end of its useful life (from the vendor's point of view). At this stage, a v ...
*Software release life cycle
A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...
References
Business software
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