Archiving Lawson Data

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When it comes to Legacy applications, data retention policies rule the day. Whether you’re moving to the newest cloud solution or simply upgrading, the option of keeping all of your data is likely not available to you. How do you choose what you keep around and what to purge? And what happens to the data you keep? How will you get access to it? How will you secure it? How long do you keep it around? Who will pay for it? Where will it be stored? Who will be responsible for maintaining it?

One option is to keep the old system around for inquiry purposes only. While this option seems like the simplest solution, it can actually prove to be the most costly and complicated. Here are some ways keeping an old system like Lawson 9 or Lawson 10x can backfire down the line:
  •  Old server hardware becomes more unreliable each day putting you at greater risk for losing your data
  • Older, unsupported operating systems like, iSeries AS400, AIX, Windows 2008 and Windows 2012 server  are no longer supported by their respective vendors and pose an increasing security risk to your entire data center.
  • Additional components necessary to keep the application running will keep your organization from moving forward. Having to keep older domain controllers, LDAP servers, web servers and database servers around simply to upkeep an already outdated application around brings with it immeasurable costs and risks.
  • As employees leave the organization and new talent arrives, it becomes increasingly difficult to give and get access to the older applications and train new users on how to access them. This often necessitates the need to retain professional services that can cost thousands of dollars and may not be able to help in the worst case scenarios.
Another option is to dump all the data into a data lake and worry about it all later. While this option sounds quick and simple, it fails the most basic test for a data archive solution; accessibility. Users will require access to the archive data and simply pointing them to a data lake does not provide realistic access. Oftentimes, clients end up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on BI applications and custom analytics in order to extract the data they need.
Luckily, There is a third solution. The APIX serverless framework, based on the AWS serverless stack has opened up incredible possibilities for inquiry only applications never before possible without a substantial investment in infrastructure. Clients can now provision a web based, lightweight, data archive solution and migrate all their data within days rather than months and at a fraction of the cost of the other solutions with none of the risk. Find out how the APIX serverless framework can help you meet all your Lawson data archive needs and eliminate the legacy servers for good.