Agilest® highly recommends utilizing or moving to a Service Oriented Architecture. SOA provides many advantages over traditional enterprise architectures including the ease of maintenance by utilizing the capabilities of the ever improving SAAS (cloud).
A service oriented architecture can be implemented even at companies that have a large number of legacy systems because once the ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) is in place, older systems can be contained and attached to the new system at a pace that works for the organization. The advantages increase over time as older systems can be replaced easily with new systems as long as they adhere to SOA standards. With SOA it is possible to intermix SAAS and local applications and containered legacy systems as long as they all adhere to the protocols of the service oriented architecture of the system.
AASF™ Integration
Agilest® AAEA™ - Adaptive Agile Enterprise Architect