Skilled staff members come and go. While some stick around longer than others, there are few that make the impact that engineers and IT staff do upon leaving. Sourcing experienced talent may be easier with newer technologies like AWS or Microsoft Azure. That’s not necessarily the case for many legacy applications. This makes recruiting and retaining talent capable of supporting older applications more of a challenge. A growing number of legacy skilled engineers are approaching retirement. Organizations may find themselves in an ever-tightening bind to find, hire, and retain the right talent.

Training the New Hires

Organizations that still have engineers familiar with all of their legacy applications, can still be behind when it comes to training new team members. Unfortunately, few legacy applications are covered in today’s educational institutions and continuing education (CE) courses for them are a thing of the past. This means that many times, veteran staff members are left to pick up the slack. It can also be challenging as your team balances daily duties while training new hires. This can result in resentment and overall job dissatisfaction.

In some cases, the office of the CIO may consider shifting or modernizing infrastructure entirely before remembering the substantial investments made for older, near-antiquated systems. Therein lies the proverbial catch-22: invest in completely new technology that the modern workforce can support or continue chasing down a limited pool of engineers to justify past investments.

Thankfully, there are options if your organization is open to collaboration and the right strategic alliances. With the right strategic partnership, giving up on the systems already entrenched in your organization doesn’t have to be the only path forward.

First a Word About Temp Agencies

Utilizing temp agencies has never been a desirable solution for the IT industry. Workers sourced through temporary staffing agencies often receive a significantly lower salary than their experience dictates appropriate. Additionally, much of the talent in the temp or staffing agency pool is in transition and actively seeking a full-time employment situation.

With the less than competitive salary from the staffing company and an eye on a full-time position, and available engineer from a staffing company will often move on to a better position at the first opportunity. This “revolving door” of talent rarely works out well and in many cases, the temporary employee ends up merely filling a seat and managing mundane tasks.

It can be natural for some organizations to feel a little boxed in at this point. Legacy apps still play a huge part for so many and the inherent deep integration can make it seem critical that they attract and retain the necessary talent. But that’s not necessarily true.

The Power of Partnerships

The managed services space has evolved and expanded by leaps and bounds in recent years. As a result, there are almost always multiple options available to partner with an organization that has the engineering and administrative support for your legacy applications. Leveraging a partnership with a reputable and efficient organization like Connectria can completely eradicate those issues once and for all.

We have the expertise you need to manage IBM i environments. We can deploy and maintain mission-critical workloads on an IBM i or IBM AIX platform. A partnership with Connectria can reduce or even remove staffing headaches for legacy application support. Partnerships are the most practical way to continue your business on the tracks laid from investments made in years past.

Connect with the Experts

Contact Connectria today to find out how we can help take those legacy systems off your mind once and for all. We offer legacy application support and several options including remote monitoring, remote administration, and more. Our remote monitoring solution ensures your systems are watched with complete regard for security, compliance, and performance. Our experts will follow your escalation policies and procedures and alert your staff accordingly. Remote administration for your on-premise legacy systems ensures you can utilize your overall IT budget more efficiently. This covers the full administration of your environment, including OS management and even backup and restores processes. We look forward to providing the solution you need, partnering to give your legacy applications new life.