Under the best conditions, legacy system leveraging is a complex, time-consuming job. Even screen scrapers and code generators, which are widely hailed for their simplicity, require a fair amount of hands-on work. "It’s when you start leveraging the APIs that it goes back to traditional development," says Prudential Institutional’s Landon.

Further complicating the CIO’s job are questions about how legacy systems will eventually fit into emerging Web services strategies. "It’s one of the major missing pieces of the Web services story," says Hurwitz’s McDaniel. He says he believes that a Web services interface could make legacy systems more reusable and flexible by allowing applications to communicate with each other. "For example, you can suddenly start rearranging legacy transactions to provide new kinds of functionality for business users," he says. But the basic blueprint for such an environment remains unfinished?at least for the moment. "It’s unfortunate that the loudest proponents of Web services haven’t really given a lot of thought to what they’re going to do with legacy applications," he says. Relativity’s Wadhwa says the next release of RescueWare will address Web services integration.

Despite all the obstacles and perils, many CIOs have no alternative but to begin leveraging their legacy resources. "You’ve got a lot of current costs sunk into those systems," McDaniel notes. "Obviously, you want to continue to extend the value of those systems to a whole new audience of users." AMR’s Stiffler agrees. "Given the current hazy economic outlook, it’s important for CIOs to have tools that allow them to use their existing infrastructure." n