Forrester survey: Enterprises taking aim at legacy apps

Large enterprises plan on replacing their old applications this year, holding their software budgets steady and aiming to improve integration to save money, according to a report from Forrester Research.

In a survey of 2,200 IT executives in North America, Forrester found the following:

• A lot of time is being spent on updating legacy applications. In a report, Forrester writes:

Updating and modernizing key legacy apps (64%), consolidating or rationalizing enterprise apps (61%), and increasing deployment and use of collaboration technologies (54%) are the top three initiatives for the current planning cycle when it comes to importance, with more than one-quarter (26%) of firms saying that updating and modernizing key legacy apps is very important.

• Companies allocated 16 percent of their IT budgets to software in 2008 and plan to allocate 17 percent over the next year. Among small businesses, 19 percent of IT budgets will be allocated to software over the next 12 months.
• Eighty-one percent of enterprises say they are looking to cut IT costs as their major goal. Seventy seven percent say better integration between applications is a big goal.
• SaaS is being considered by large enterprises, but 31 percent of respondents said that security was a major reason to refrain from big implementations.
• Thirty-three percent of large enterprises preferred packaged applications. Forrester writes:

When implementing a major application, a packaged app or app modules are the most preferred deployment options for 33% of firms. The next preferred option is a tailored solution assembled from existing custom and packaged app modules (29%). Few prefer to turn to SaaS (2%) or a hosted solution (1%). While human capital management software currently has the most traction, implemented by 45% of enterprises, ERP will see the most growth, as 30% have plans to expand or upgrade their existing implementations.

• Web 2.0 tools have buzz, but little else. Twenty percent of large enterprises have implemented discussion forum software, but adoption remains low. Forrester writes:

At 10% and 12%, discussion forums and wikis are also seeing the most piloting. The most implemented technologies — discussion forums, wikis, idea generation or management tools, and RSS — are typically also the ones that are generating the highest amount of interest and look likely to feed into the pipeline for future pilots and implementation.

While those takeaways are notable, one key development is that large enterprises are increasingly interested in custom code.

Here's a look at the winning development platforms: