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Government Relying on Legacy Technology

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

A little more than 70 percent of federal IT decision makers surveyed said their agency runs important applications on outdated IT systems, according to Dell's new State of IT Trends 2016 study focused on the federal market.

In addition, more than half of those surveyed in total reported that their agency runs computer operating systems that have exceeded their official end-of-life.

Reliance on legacy IT has potentially damaging consequences for agencies. Aging systems are expensive to maintain and they put critical data at risk, leaving limited funds and time to devote to IT modernization and digital transformation. These challenges were reflected by federal IT decision makers in the survey.

Cybersecurity was the most frequently referenced concern associated with legacy IT, cited by 42 percent of respondents, followed by the cost of system support.

Other key research findings include:

■ 53 percent of federal respondents said their agency uses software or operating systems no longer supported by the vendor.

■ The operating systems frequently referenced as out of date included Windows 7 (2009) or Windows 8 (2012) (61 percent) and Windows Server 2008 (34 percent), each of which have passed their end of life.

■ Federal respondents listed IT infrastructure systems (46 percent) and file storage/collaboration systems (39 percent) as most in need of modernization or replacement.

■ The 5 oldest elements of hardware and infrastructure utilized at respondents’ agencies are desktops, servers, network routers, network switches and laptops.

■ Federal respondents point to their agencies’ lack of knowledge about available solutions (24 percent) and conflicting digital transformation strategies (22 percent) as obstacles to IT modernization.

Agencies can address the issues revealed by the survey by investing in modernized IT systems and committing to becoming future ready. Established on software-based environments, cloud technology and secure mobile devices, a future-ready agency is more responsive to user demands and better equipped to meet mission requirements in innovative ways. Future-ready technologies can help agencies become more secure and efficient, and can drive savings through reduced maintenance costs, making the transition away from legacy IT easier.

Steve Harris, VP and GM, Dell Federal, said: “The alarming percentage of critical applications running on legacy IT systems, as revealed by our survey, aligns with many of the concerns currently being voiced by government leaders and agency customers alike. For many organizations the first step is making the commitment to virtualized, software-based environments. Agencies need this future-ready IT environment to unlock the power of innovation, support digital transformation, protect mission-critical data and reduce maintenance costs.”

Methodology: The research was performed by PSB, who conducted an online survey in May 2016 among 100 federal government IT Decision-Makers (ITDMs) and Business Decision Makers (BDMs). This survey was conducted as an extension of the State of IT Trends 2016 study, in which PSB conducted 1,200 online interviews between April 15 and May 4, 2016, in the US, UK, Germany, Japan, Brazil, India and China. The respondents consist of 700 ITDMs and 500 BDMs.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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Government Relying on Legacy Technology

Pete Goldin
APMdigest

A little more than 70 percent of federal IT decision makers surveyed said their agency runs important applications on outdated IT systems, according to Dell's new State of IT Trends 2016 study focused on the federal market.

In addition, more than half of those surveyed in total reported that their agency runs computer operating systems that have exceeded their official end-of-life.

Reliance on legacy IT has potentially damaging consequences for agencies. Aging systems are expensive to maintain and they put critical data at risk, leaving limited funds and time to devote to IT modernization and digital transformation. These challenges were reflected by federal IT decision makers in the survey.

Cybersecurity was the most frequently referenced concern associated with legacy IT, cited by 42 percent of respondents, followed by the cost of system support.

Other key research findings include:

■ 53 percent of federal respondents said their agency uses software or operating systems no longer supported by the vendor.

■ The operating systems frequently referenced as out of date included Windows 7 (2009) or Windows 8 (2012) (61 percent) and Windows Server 2008 (34 percent), each of which have passed their end of life.

■ Federal respondents listed IT infrastructure systems (46 percent) and file storage/collaboration systems (39 percent) as most in need of modernization or replacement.

■ The 5 oldest elements of hardware and infrastructure utilized at respondents’ agencies are desktops, servers, network routers, network switches and laptops.

■ Federal respondents point to their agencies’ lack of knowledge about available solutions (24 percent) and conflicting digital transformation strategies (22 percent) as obstacles to IT modernization.

Agencies can address the issues revealed by the survey by investing in modernized IT systems and committing to becoming future ready. Established on software-based environments, cloud technology and secure mobile devices, a future-ready agency is more responsive to user demands and better equipped to meet mission requirements in innovative ways. Future-ready technologies can help agencies become more secure and efficient, and can drive savings through reduced maintenance costs, making the transition away from legacy IT easier.

Steve Harris, VP and GM, Dell Federal, said: “The alarming percentage of critical applications running on legacy IT systems, as revealed by our survey, aligns with many of the concerns currently being voiced by government leaders and agency customers alike. For many organizations the first step is making the commitment to virtualized, software-based environments. Agencies need this future-ready IT environment to unlock the power of innovation, support digital transformation, protect mission-critical data and reduce maintenance costs.”

Methodology: The research was performed by PSB, who conducted an online survey in May 2016 among 100 federal government IT Decision-Makers (ITDMs) and Business Decision Makers (BDMs). This survey was conducted as an extension of the State of IT Trends 2016 study, in which PSB conducted 1,200 online interviews between April 15 and May 4, 2016, in the US, UK, Germany, Japan, Brazil, India and China. The respondents consist of 700 ITDMs and 500 BDMs.

Pete Goldin is Editor and Publisher of APMdigest

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In 2026, the cost of downtime or an outage is no longer just a technical inconvenience; it's a $600 billion wake up call for global businesses. As our digital ecosystems become  more interconnected, each touchpoint introduces new risks and multiplies the consequences when things go wrong. And the data is clear: aggregate downtime costs  for Global 2,000 companies have surged 50% since 2024, reaching a staggering $600 billion ...

Deloitte found that 74% of enterprises expect to deploy agentic AI solutions in the next 24 months. However, the rush to deployment is outpacing foundational work, though. Only 21% of enterprises have fully formed agent governance models in place. The result? AI agents deployed without guidance or governance begin to function as fragmented islands of complexity ...

Cloud spending is no longer viewed as a passthrough IT expense, but as a strategic financial lever that directly impacts innovation capacity, profitability and enterprise resilience, according to the CFO Cloud Cost Optimization Report from Azul ...

As AI moves from generating responses to performing actions, the need for trust increases exponentially. And as organizations enlist AI agents for increasingly sophisticated business processes, trust is going to be the single most important theme for spurring adoption. What can organizations do to build trustworthy AI agents? ...

I've spent a lot of time in the channel, and one thing I keep coming back to is this: a partner program is only as good as what it looks like in the field. Many programs look great on paper, but when a partner is in front of a customer navigating a complex hybrid environment or trying to make the case for AI-powered observability, the gap between what a vendor promises and what it actually delivers becomes very clear, very fast ...

Enterprises today operate in a real-time environment where uninterrupted access to trusted data has become a baseline expectation for users, applications and automated systems. Traditional DataOps models, built on manual effort and human triage, cannot keep pace with this always active demand. AI agents are emerging as the operational backbone, ensuring consistent data availability, reinforcing trustworthiness and enabling a level of scale that manual processes cannot achieve ...

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