Legacy Software

Blueberry is approached by many businesses wanting to update their legacy software systems to improve business efficiency. Typical comments we receive are:

“We have been using a software package for 10 years, but the supplier is no longer supporting it”.

“We need to update our core systems. We have looked around for a suitable software package, but we can’t find one that works with our business processes – we have concluded that we need a bespoke system”.

“The business is growing and we can no longer efficiently run on Excel spreadsheets – we need a system tailored to our needs!”.

“Our Access‐based system is under strain and we are concerned about performance and data security”.

A common tale is that the software a business has depended on for some years has become unsupported by the original supplier. This is an incumbent risk to many businesses, large and small. In many cases, the software is based on technology that in now outdated, such as Foxpro, Borland C++ and Delphi. These programming languages were ground‐breaking in their time, but they are not geared up for today’s cloud‐centric, high performance business needs.

It is a significant risk if a system becomes unsupported; often, it is not simply a case of transferring support to a third party IT provider; there can be IPR and software licensing issues that can hinder progress (a “nightmare scenario” we’ve encountered many times). By the way, when Blueberry develops software we usually transfer the IPR in the software to the customer on completion of a project to avoid this.

Often the need to replace an ageing system is simply a result of the business growing and changing. Many companies have started small and been able to run their operations with spreadsheets or simple Microsoft Access‐based systems. But as they grow these systems become unwieldy as they were not designed for large communities of users or for mobile use. An additional problem is that they can prove difficult to keep updated to reflect the evolving business processes.

It is an obvious first step when looking to replace a business system to trawl the market for suitable software packages. Often, this can be fruitful. The emergence of cloud‐based packages for everyday applications like CRM, accounting, HR management and so on mean that you can be rapidly up‐and‐running with up‐to‐date software, hosted on the cloud, for a few tens of pounds per user per month.

But what about your core business processes ‐ the part of your business that differentiates you from your competitors? We find that most of our customers ultimately look for a bespoke solution; one that it engineered to their exact requirements and will be owned by them.

Blueberry software systems are based on industry‐standard software technology, such as Microsoft SQL Server, C#.NET and ASP.NET. Furthermore, we have developed our own framework for web and cloud based applications called Blueberry Web Template (BBWT).

The latest generation of BBWT has the resilient Microsoft technology at its core, but with a user interface built with angular.js, an exciting new Javascript‐based framework for building highly performant user interfaces.

When a new bespoke system replaces legacy software, there will inevitably be data migration to consider. Often, historic data is held in multiple databases, there may be duplicates or conflicting records, and so a planned cleansing and migration of data to the new database is essential.

Ultimately, a bespoke software system, built for the organisation’s specific business processes, is the ideal solution to leave legacy problems behind and focus on the business’ future.