Entelect’s manager: solution architecture, Greg Schroder, says aligning technology with business strategy drives meaningful modernisation, especially when navigating legacy systems and enterprise digital transformation.
According to Greg Schroder, manager: solution architecture at Entelect – a global end-to-end technology solutions company that also has a presence in several countries – any software solution should always be aligned to a business’s objectives. And, while Entelect has grown rapidly in the last few years with over 1,800 employees, their core purpose remains driving business modernisation to enable true value creation.
Greg leads a team of solution architects and has been with Entelect for over 17 years. He is involved across Entelect’s business, including business development, pre-sales, working with partners such as Microsoft and AWS, project delivery and knowledge-sharing through internal learning and development.
Legacy challenges and choices
A significant part of solution architecture involves dealing with legacy systems. For Greg, the integration of new platforms in enterprise legacy systems does not come without its challenges.
“The new platforms might not be built with or use the organisations’ standard technologies, security policies and infrastructure compatibility,” Greg explains. “Sometimes, these systems don’t have a suitable method of integration – or they don’t even have one to begin with. Systems need a common language for communication and a common data model. There are industry standard data model and process specifications, but they still aren’t widely adopted, which means custom integration layers need to be implemented for message and process translation.”
“There are then trade-offs for where the integration is done and who implements and owns the integration,” Greg says.
“A centralising integration layer allows for standardisation, governance and pooled skills, but can turn into a delivery bottleneck, create a centralised point of failure and will likely require broad and deep domain and systems knowledge to maintain. Decentralising integrations, by allowing feature and core teams to implement, leads to independent delivery utilising their specific domain knowledge. But this is at the risk of non-reuseable or standardised implementations, increasing maintenance effort and complexity.”
Greg adds that implementing observability to enable a common thread of message traceability passing through the different systems is key – and also a challenge.
Mapping out risks, readiness and keeping the end in sight
Greg believes that technology is often a means to an end for businesses, and Entelect helps figure out what that ‘end’ is by keeping the organisation’s strategy in mind. “When it comes to which legacy systems to keep during a merger, for example, decisions regarding retaining, retiring, or replatforming legacy systems must be driven by business value. Do they support and align with strategic goals, enhance agility and enable innovation?”
He adds that once there’s a clear idea of what the end goal is, and where a legacy system fits (or doesn’t fit) in that vision, modernisation depends on readiness and technical feasibility – and the associated cost, effort and capacity available. He highlights the importance of mapping out the risks and possible or probable impact of not modernising.
“The longer you leave making decisions, the more pain and cost at the end of the day,” Greg cautions. “Something that Entelect strives towards, is advocating for continuous, incremental updates and dealing with technical debt timeously to keep systems ‘evergreen’.”
South African innovation through legacy integration
Through integrating legacy systems in South African enterprises, Greg notes that Entelect has seen how the country has developed substantially in certain areas. “That’s due to unique challenges that South Africa faces, that lead to innovative solutions, for example in banking and payments, advancements in value-added services, virtual cards, mobile money and rapid payments. Custom work is often needed when integrating global products not originally designed for the African context.”
Greg shares a South African case study involving the modernisation of a large bank’s retail mobile banking app. Entelect helped migrate the bank’s core technology to a modern, cloud-based stack to improve delivery timelines and replace proprietary software with custom libraries, which decreased OpEx and boosted scalability and availability.
“This resulted in far better user ratings for the app on the Google Play Store, making it the number-one finance app – and adding win-win value to both the bank and their clients.”
Building a relationship from day one
Greg highlights that Entelect engages with a client’s risk and compliance teams from the get-go to understand their policies and procedures, and how teams can work within those.
“We like building a relationship early on. We typically run data classification exercises, labelling data in regulated or unregulated categories, and defining data treatment policies. Data sovereignty isn’t always an issue if you’re applying those treatments effectively. Obviously, you need to understand what data you need, only using and moving necessary data, while considering those policies and treatments,” he notes.
When it comes to building AI into existing legacy environments, the process and workflow isn’t the same as typical app features development, according to Greg. “Processes are still maturing, and it requires faster implementation as AI is often experimental, but it also requires a defined, measurable goal such as prediction accuracy or ground truth test scenarios so it works correctly and safely.”
For enterprises thinking of going the AI route, Greg advises they start with a business use case, addressing a real problem, rather than implementing AI for its own sake.
Bridging teams and tech for modernisation success
According to Greg, modernisation is critical not only to manage rising maintenance costs but also to proactively mitigate operational and technological risks. “With Entelect’s extensive experience in modernising legacy tech stacks, we are ideally positioned to serve as a trusted technology partner, enabling businesses to adapt swiftly to evolving markets, regulatory environments and technological advancements,” he noted.
Greg underscores that successful modernisation hinges on effective communication, ensuring both cultural and technical alignment between legacy development teams and the broader architectural vision. He advises that leadership and teams jointly define objectives and success criteria, collaborate closely, share knowledge and leverage each other’s expertise.
“As a partner, we provide access to deep technical expertise, and we firmly believe that the cornerstone of any modernisation initiative is transparent communication and strong relationships – which is what Entelect is all about.”
