When to replace your legacy CMS: The tipping point

20 May 2020
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Posted by Crownpeak
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"Don't throw good money after bad." Whether you're heading to the mechanic (again) with a beloved old automobile or fixing a fixer-upper home, it can be hard to follow this extremely sensible advice, even if you realize you've passed the tipping point. Even companies find it hard to stop plowing resources into obsolete technology – especially when it comes to the care and feeding of their enterprise web CMS.

The reality is, legacy content management systems , defined as any CMS not expressly architected for the cloud, are entrenched in your company's IT infrastructure and in the way it does business. The idea of rip-and-replace may send shivers down your spine. But with the license cost of a legacy CMS typically comprising only 15% to 20% of its total cost of ownership or TCO, your company almost certainly devotes the majority of its development resources to basic maintenance and upgrades.

This painfully well-understood fact means that critical upgrades are delayed or abandoned. In turn, users are deprived of better functionality, and your company loses out on more profits.

What's the true cost?

For more than two decades, software based in the cloud has delivered on its potential to cost much less to own than on-premises applications. With resource-intensive legacy content management systems, the economic contrast is even more stark.

Legacy content management systems are not built for the cloud; they can't take advantage of true cloud benefits such as hands-free upgrades and maintenance, the efficiency of true multi-tenant architecture, and streamlined data sharing via REST APIs. Your legacy CMS requires your company to invest in, provision or manage infrastructure, not to mention never-ending maintenance cycles and an occasional upgrade.

Once up and running, actually using the CMS entails long development cycles with expensive digital agency resources, because the programming language it runs on is not within marketers' wheelhouse. You are likely quite familiar with these constraints.

Crownpeak, the only enterprise-class content management system built in the cloud and for the cloud, can completely change the economics of your company's CMS TCO. Leading firms are doing so today. What we've seen in the past few months:

  • An international sporting goods manufacturer and retailer tired of million-dollar bi-annual upgrades
  • A household care products company finding $350,000 of savings in the first year
  • A top-10 insurance company paying $1 million per year on maintaining hardware alone

These companies were able to achieve these significant time and money savings with Crownpeak's inherent abilities to:

  • Stand up pages and websites in minutes and days, not weeks and months
  • Slash development time compared to legacy CMS platforms
  • Get started quickly, with no infrastructure provisioning or purchase required.

Make a clean sweep to Crownpeak

Learn more about how easy it is to replace your legacy CMS with Crownpeak. Get the new ebook, "When Cost and Speed Matter: The Key Benefits of Replacing Your Web CMS Today." In addition, use the Crownpeak Web CMS Carrying Costs calculator to find out how much you're spending, and could be saving by switching to Crowpeak. Visit crownpeak.com/tco-calculator and get ready to surpass your company's tipping point, right now, with confidence.

Tags: Web Content Management Digital Experience Management

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