Category: Legacy systems

Look, we get it, breakups are never easy. But how often in hindsight do we know we not only did the right thing, but actually, we should’ve done it sooner? That’s how Digibee customers feel once they finally decide to dump their Legacy iPaaS for Digibee’s serverless, modern platform.

Our customers have a myriad of reasons to leave: end of support of a legacy solution, deploying a new technology requiring modern architecture, over-extended IT teams managing integrations causing priority work to pile up, or the ever-increasing update and support costs that add little to no added value.

Whatever the reason, putting off the inevitable prevents true scalability, slows growth, hurts morale, and ultimately impacts your bottom line. It’s time to move on. Digibee’s iPaaS not only empowers your development team and maximizes their capabilities, we also enable your transition quickly, cost-effectively, and without heartbreak. Really.

>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business. 

Breaking up is hard to do

Change is often unavoidable – you can choose to prepare for it, or choose to react to it. We’ve heard all the reasons preventing organizations from leaving their co-dependent legacy iPaaS relationship. We aren’t pretending they aren’t valid, but making the change with Digibee may not be as hard as you think. 

We’ve listed a few of these “relationship struggles” below. If any of them resonate with you, talk to our team. We can address each of your concerns and put your mind at ease, strategizing your potential replacement and moving forward with a healthier integration partnership.

But, it’s comfortable

You’ve been with your legacy solution a long time. You have an understanding and leaving feels too disruptive. “We’re fine. It’s fine. I’m fine.” Sound familiar? 

Many technology professionals have lost sleep over technology replacements that proved so difficult to deploy that the new solution is underwhelming in comparison. Sure, change can be hard, but the reality is that ignoring necessary change can lead to your organization getting stuck – risking the growth and innovation needed to succeed and outshine your competitors. 

But, we know how it works. With IT teams already overextended, the decision to replace an existing “good enough” technology needs to be justified with an undeniable reason to act and a clear, quantifiable business outcome. Often, organizations don’t seek an alternative solution until a crisis arrives making the decision for them.

Changing vendors is an investment and you need assurance that disruptions and downtime will be minimal. Digibee’s implementation model minimizes downtime and includes onboarding your team quickly so they can be valuable almost immediately. Did we mention we’ve done it before? 

The way we were

You’ve been creating code together for years, there’s so much history and invested time. How can you just leave it all behind? 

The mere thought of walking out on your existing in-house solution and all its interconnections and customizations gives you so much anxiety that it seems easier to just stay. Digibee’s solution is not just robust and scalable, but it’s also low-code and composable. Change management is easy and repeatable, so your development team doesn’t have to continue down the usual path of constant customizations and tangled code. 

Digibee’s iPaaS empowers all developers – not just integration specialists – to easily build and monitor integrations. We are the first serverless iPaaS platform. Our architecture is born in the cloud and built on microservices. You can leave the complexity behind and position yourself for a future already built to be scalable and grow as your business grows.

Maybe it’s time to spice things up 

You chose your existing integration product for a reason. Opening up to a new vendor, especially when you already have one, might sound like more of a headache, but it could be the solution you need to alleviate your issues.

Sometimes, the right solution is a hybrid model, where Digibee works in tandem with your existing platform. Our team will take the time to understand the rationale and purpose of your existing solution. Whichever solution best suits your organization’s needs, Digibee’s team can walk you through step-by-step how they would approach each of your concerns and support every aspect of your transition.

The financial challenges would be too much 

You’ve invested so (so) much in this relationship. It’s hard to justify investing in another solution when technically, you already have one. 

We know budgets are constrained in our current economy. Let our team walk you through a detailed ROI analysis that explores the pros and cons of spend on your current solution versus Digibee. The reality often is, that the savings in time, resources, and money that a replacement or co-existing iPaaS can deliver, can be significant for your business.

Modern iPaaS solutions like ours are actually extremely cost-effective, especially compared to legacy solutions. Transitioning from an on-prem solution to a cloud solution also turns your investment from CapEx to OpEx, which provides additional financial benefits. And, our straight-forward, transparent pricing model includes onboarding, implementation and support services. We can empower your team to deliver in as little as six weeks or less. 

Change nothing, and nothing ever changes

If you’re tired of feeling stuck in a legacy relationship (and we didn’t say partnership for a reason) and looking to strategize the next steps for your business, we’d love to hear from you. 

Get in touch with our team today and let us walk you through how we can address each of your pain points with our simple, fast, modern approach to integration. 

We’ve come to recognize the change in facial expression.

Here at Digibee, we participate in a lot of in person technology events. The expression change I mentioned above typically follows a pattern. First, we engage an event attendee in conversation, tell them about Digibee’s serverless iPaaS, our users’ ability to enable seamless scale up and scale down, our event-driven capabilities, and we do a quick live demo of our iPaaS interface.

We can literally see the interest growing as we talk. Then the change happens, “Oh wait, we already use XYZ for integration.”

To be sure, your organization is using something for integration. With the average number of SaaS applications alone landing well over 100 deployments (and growing) at most organizations – not to mention the various systems, data sources and APIs you have in production – you’re very likely using some combination of iPaaS, automation technology, ESBs, middleware and homegrown coding to cobble it all together.

And we’re well aware of the reluctance to add more tools or to rip and replace installed technologies. You need to be sure that you’re not just adding more complexity to what already must feel like untenable technology sprawl. One more tool and one more budget line item require value to be validated.

Integration tech should empower developers..yet amidst all this sprawl it often becomes the bottleneck to productivity. And yet, the pain points associated with the various legacy iPaaS providers are real. Integration technology, when it really works the way it was intended, should empower developers and architects to innovate and build. There is a better way.

So, back to the event attendee who was excited about Digibee until they realized their organization already had an integration solution deployed. This sounds like it’s the conversation-ender, but it really is where our conversation begins. In fact, the majority of new Digibee users already had some form of integration technology in place, many already running one (or more!) iPaaS solutions.

New Digibee users commonly start with one of two scenarios: A rip and replace of an existing iPaaS or adding Digibee while leaving the legacy incumbent in place (for now).  

The pain points you identify for your enterprise will help you determine your best path forward to a modern integration strategy. You may choose to deploy Digibee to coexist with a legacy product. Or you could opt to end the relationship altogether and move unfettered into the future with Digibee. Let’s examine each option. 

>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business. 

Option 1: Should you stay? 

Coexisting with a legacy integration solution makes a lot of sense for organizations that want to engineer change rapidly. 

By deploying an iPaaS in tandem with your existing system, you maintain the status quo while quickly standing up a modern platform, that can be used by all of your developers, to whittle down backlogs and enable innovation tracks. 

Coexistence triggers 

• Ever-growing IT project backlogs that stifle the growth and success of the business. 
• Limited resources to carry out integration work. 
• Increased cost of licensing each time you add capacity. 

Coexistence benefits 

• Quickly train and empower every developer to build and manage integrations at no extra cost. Limited resources to carry out integration work. 
• Focus on the work your legacy solution is incapable of doing. Reduce and eliminate IT project backlogs in record time. 
• Expedite innovation initiatives within a composable environment where modern applications and components from different vendors easily co-exist. 

Most importantly, the time and resources you invest in a coexistence integration model today will support the wholesale migration from your legacy integration product when you’re ready to take this final step. With a modern iPaaS already in place, the transition will be fast-tracked. Instead of starting from scratch, you’ll be well on your way. Make sure you capture these efficiencies in your ROI model.

Coexistence success story: Payless

Payless, a global retail footwear chain, needed to implement a new ecommerce platform so the retailer could sell its in-store merchandise online. Payless selected Digibee to integrate its retail management software with the new ecommerce platform. 

Although Payless had a legacy solution in place, the company knew it would take too long, be too costly, and require too many full time resources. To expedite the project, the retailer elected to install Digibee in parallel with the old system. 

The initiative was a resounding success, with Digibee connecting the new ecommerce system in 200 stores, across 15 countries, in less than 30 days. Get the full story: 

Option 2: Or should you go? 

A rip and replace scenario is rarely easy, regardless of the technology. The wholescale replacement of any business-critical system is always a significant consideration – especially when transitioning from your legacy integration product to a modern iPaaS, systems that literally connect your entire enterprise. 

However, the upsides are impressive and definitely worthwhile. Once implemented, the new iPaaS provides the business with unprecedented efficiencies and cost savings, while expediting important innovation tracks that support digital transformation and other progressive initiatives. 

Rip and replace triggers 

• Inability to scale back expenses and increase the total cost of ownership (TCO) for development. 
• Expensive and time-consuming system updates and end of support processes divert resources from higher value work. 
• Ever-growing IT project backlogs stifle the growth and success of the business. 
• Inability to support modern technologies that rely upon scalable and agile integrations. 
• Dwindling ROI as the costs to maintain the legacy system rapidly outpace any value to the business. 
• Specialized integration developers are too costly to hire, retain, and continually train and certify. 
• Incapable of supporting merger and acquisition initiatives. 

Rip and replace benefits 

The upsides are similar to what you would realize with a coexistence scenario. However, the efficiencies scale even higher without the encumbrance of a legacy solution running in tandem. 

• Quickly train and empower every developer to build and manage integrations at no extra cost. 
• Immediately reduce and even eliminate IT project backlogs in record time. 
• Fast track innovation within a composable environment where modern applications and components easily co-exist within an established infrastructure.

Rip and replace success story: Johnson Brothers

Johnson Brothers, a leading wine, beer, and spirits distributor in the United States, faced an important decision when its legacy integration system neared an end of support deadline. Either transition to the cloud version of the current product or choose a different direction for its integration strategy. 

After careful consideration, Johnson Brothers elected to rip and replace the incumbent solution, replacing it with Digibee. They were able to implement 6 years of integrations in 6 months time.

The company achieved an immediate savings of 40% on the integration platform purchase, with an implementation time 70% faster than upgrading to the cloud version of the legacy system. For more on this story, read Four Ways Johnson Brothers Praises Digibee Partnership.

Next steps with Digibee

If this blog post got you thinking about how modern integration can empower your developer team, I encourage you to download a free copy of the Digibee whitepaper: Does your enterprise integration strategy inspire or impede?, a detailed examination of the savings and efficiencies businesses achieve with modern integration technology.

For more information, and to get the conversation started, contact us to arrange for a live demonstration on Digibee in action.

Every Digibee customer journey starts with an impetus – a chronic pain point that drives the company to change how it integrates. Often these scenarios have measurable impacts to the business, impeding growth, profitability, the health, and ultimately, the success of the organization.

Let me start this blog post by stating that some of our most pleased customers here at Digibee are former users of legacy iPaaS platforms. You may have seen the news of our feature release using AI to seamlessly migrate integrations from other platforms to Digibee.

Or some of our customer stories of already using iPaaS technology, turning to Digibee to overcome major integration challenges. Plenty of proof that Digibee can help, even if you already run an iPaaS.

But change is hard. That phrase is a cliche because it’s so true. And most technology professionals have at least one terrible memory associated with the phrase ‘rip and replace’ – where a technology replacement is so difficult that the new solution ultimately underwhelms in comparison to the toil in the transition.

Add to this the reality of how busy IT and development teams constantly are, juggling priorities and scrambling to meet deadlines. Technology replacements need to be prompted by a justifiable, quantifiable reason to act, with a defined set of desired business outcomes. If an embedded solution is “just good enough” then its replacement plan can get delayed and delayed. The true benefits of a better alternative will have to wait for a crisis.

Indeed, most Digibee customers who leave another iPaaS are doing so for a specific reason – be it end of support of a legacy on-prem iPaaS solution, a new technology deployment that demands a modern approach to integration, or frustration with ever increasing costs with no commiserate increase in benefit. 

All Digibee users enjoy the scalability and agility of our iPaaS not just as backend infrastructure but as a platform for innovation. But to get to that plateau of composability, you need to start with the decision to move. So, in this post, we’re sharing the 5 reasons to not replace an established technology, as included in our eBook, ‘Does your integration strategy inspire or impede?’

My goal is to show that our team and our technology are poised to help to not only improve your development team’s resourcing and output, but to get you there more quickly and easily than you might have thought possible. 

>> Book a personalized demo with our team of experts and see how Digibee’s iPaaS will bring efficiency to your business. 

5 Reasons to NOT replace your iPaaS

Change is never easy. Whether you choose to rip and replace an existing system or implement a contemporary integration solution to coexist with an incumbent, it’s likely you will encounter some (if not all) of these objections:

1. “Ripping and replacing an established technology is too disruptive. The resources should be invested elsewhere.”

As with any proposed business investment, a detailed ROI will provide you with a strong position in countering this objection. As you research vendors, ask them to explain how their implementation model will ensure disruptions and downtime are minimized. Emphasize these capabilities within your ROI analysis, including a detailed offboarding strategy.

2. “The existing integration solution is too convoluted and interconnected. We will never unravel the coding that’s been created over the years.”

This is a common hurdle, especially for enterprises that have built some or all of their integration infrastructure in-house. Raise this in your discussions with potential vendors and ask how each would approach this scenario. Vendor responses should be constructive, including step-by-step details of how they will support this phase of the transition.

3. “We stand by our decision to invest in the incumbent solution and we’re not backing down.”

Personalities play a big part in decision-making. When you encounter a stakeholder who’s digging in their heels, take the time to understand their rationale when they selected the existing product. Often, the business case they made (efficiencies, cost savings, innovation, etc.) aligns with your project, potentially converting them to a proponent. If they are intransigent in their position, propose a hybrid model where old and new co-exist, with the new iPaaS focused on work that needs to be done, such as IT backlog projects.

4. “We don’t need to add even more vendors, especially when we already have an integration provider.”

Similar to the first objection, share a detailed ROI plan that reflects the savings in time, resources, and money that will be achieved with a new iPaaS, whether working in tandem with the old system or as a replacement. It’s difficult to counter a proposal that delivers measurable benefits to the business.

5. “Budgets are tight and it will be difficult to justify the spend when we already have a solution in place.”

Again, a strong ROI model will distinguish how the upside outweighs the downside when it comes to the spend. Modern-day iPaaS (unlike legacy integration) is extremely cost-effective, providing a simple pricing model that delivers all capabilities such as implementation and support services. For many enterprises, the shift from on-premises to the cloud converts the investment from CapEx to OpEx, delivering additional financial upsides.

Next steps with Digibee

We always love to hear from architecture and development leaders about how you’re currently approaching integration strategy, and how you anticipate that strategy’s evolution. If this blog struck a chord with pain points that you know your development team is enduring, but haven’t found a sufficient way to address them, then let’s talk. 

If you’re interested in learning more about Digibee’s born in the cloud iPaaS for a simpler, faster, and modern approach to integration, then contact us for a demonstration or, if you prefer, visit our product page.