In many cases, product data must live for 50 years or more, twice the lifespan of the IT systems that manage the data.
The obsolescence of legacy systems is a major challenge that can cause serious risks to business and industries worldwide due to a number of factors. First off, software licenses expire or become incompatible with new standard (e.g. 32-bit versus 64-bit). Secondly, the hardware itself becomes obsolete and needs to be replaced. This creates the third issue of moving the data to a supported system while maintaining access to the data. Lastly, the previous generation of systems requires expert users who are going into retirement leaving them unusable for the next generation.