Legacy Modernization for Education & Research: The Way to Digital Sovereignty

> Key Takeaway: Educational and research institutions often work with isolated legacy systems for campus management, library, and finance. Modernization through APIs and gradual migration creates an interoperable ecosystem — without disrupting ongoing teaching and research operations.

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Digitization has captured all areas of society, but few sectors face such unique and complex challenges as education and research.

Universities, universities and research institutions are the nucleus cells of knowledge and innovation, but their IT infrastructures often struggle with the Last of the Past: outdated, monolithic systems that meet the requirements of the 21st century. hardly ever grown.

The Legacy modemization is not only an option for this sector, but a strategic need to secure the digital sovereignty and ensure the future.

1. Why IT meets its limits in education and research

Short: The IT landscape in education and research has grown historically.

The IT landscape in education and research has grown historically. Over decades, systems have been implemented which once met their task outstandingly but have become an obstacle to innovation today.

The burden of the past: What are legacy systems?

Legacy systems are old systems based on outdated hardware, software or programming languages. They are often characterized by a number of features that make their modernization indispensable.

These include high maintenance costs, as the maintenance and operation of these systems bind most of the IT budget and specialized staff or spare parts are difficult to find.

Furthermore, they show a missing scalability because they were not designed for the exponentially growing amount of data from research projects or the increasing number of students. A critical problem is the safety risks, as outdated software often no longer receives security updates and thus represents an easy target for cyber attacks.

Finally, the ** lack of integration capability** is a major obstacle, as the connection to modern cloud services, e-learning platforms or mobile applications is complicated or impossible.

Paradoxically, however, these systems are of great value as they represent the Kernlogik and the institutions' processes that have grown over years – from student administration to research data archiving.

1.2. Specific challenges in the sector

The problems of legacy systems are reinforced by industry-specific circumstances:

| Challenge | Description | Impact on Education & Research | | :--- | :-- | :-- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Heterogenic IT infrastructure | A variety of island solutions that cannot communicate with each other (e.g. separate systems for library, campus management, research). | Inefficient processes, manual data transmission, error-prone processes. | ** Budget and skilled labour shortage High operating costs for old systems bind funds that are lacking for innovation.

Difficulties in finding IT specialists for niche technologies. | Innovation store, dependency on external service providers, overload of internal

References and further reading

Short: The following independent references complement the topics in this article:

The following independent references complement the topics in this article:

• Bitkom – German digital industry association
• German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI)
• European Commission – Digital strategy
• MDN Web Docs (Mozilla)
• W3C – World Wide Web Consortium

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