Retire Legacy Systems Securely and Keep Control of Your Enterprise Data
End to End Data Lifecycle Management with AvenDATA
Whether you run complex ERP, CRM, HR, or DMS systems or a fully proprietary legacy application, we handle the complete retirement of your legacy systems. Your business-critical data stays audit-ready, fully searchable, and available to meet CRA record-keeping requirements, regardless of your industry, the platform it came from, or how far back your records go.
The Challenge
Professional data lifecycle management covers far more than creating, using, and analyzing enterprise data. Once information reaches the end of its active life, it must be archived securely or deleted in a compliant way, and both steps need to be handled as cost-effectively as possible. This final phase is a key part of any IT modernization project.
Many organizations, including large enterprises and TSX-listed companies, struggle with this final phase:
- Historical data stays locked in legacy systems that must be kept running only to meet CRA record-keeping requirements
- These systems tie up budget and drive ongoing costs, even though they no longer deliver any business value
- External maintenance contracts continue, while your internal IT team spends its time supporting outdated infrastructure
- Security risks grow as legacy environments age without regular updates and patches
- Visibility across your data landscape is lost, making governance, transparency, and operational efficiency harder to achieve
The Consequence: Your enterprise data never completes its lifecycle. It remains in outdated, vulnerable systems that keep consuming budget, which runs counter to the core principles of legacy system retirement and modern enterprise data management.
Global Archiving Solutions
Managing your complete enterprise data lifecycle
Data lifecycle management for organizations worldwide
Archiving legacy data securely and keeping it usable over the long term is at the core of effective data lifecycle management. For over 20 years, AvenDATA has helped organizations around the world extract data securely from legacy applications. Your business-critical data stays accessible and ready for CRA audits, entirely independent of the original source system.
Our proven approach to legacy system retirement has been refined over more than 1,100 IT modernization and archiving projects. It incorporates the requirements of financial audits, legal inquiries, and internal controls, and turns them into a reliable platform your teams can work with every day.
Our ViewBox software is at the heart of this approach. As an audit-ready, intuitive retrieval system, ViewBox makes your historical data immediately usable. Whether you need to meet tax obligations, support external legal reviews, or run operational analyses, ViewBox gives you structured access to your data throughout its entire lifecycle. Leading Canadian and international companies, including TSX-listed organizations, rely on ViewBox today.
From mid-market companies to large international enterprises, ViewBox is in use across North America, Europe, and Asia. It meets the highest expectations for data security, transparency, and regulatory compliance.
Secure Historical Enterprise Data. Keep Every Report Traceable.
Data lifecycle management from extraction to analysis
We deliver far more than a simple data extraction from your legacy system. In ViewBox, you can analyze, search, and trace your historical enterprise data at any time. Preserving these business-critical reports is the foundation of effective data lifecycle management.
Our services include:
- Reconstruction of key standard reports and operational evaluations
- Rebuilding of customized reports and in-house developments
- Secure archiving of all related financial documents, including invoices and purchase orders, so you are always ready for an audit
Before your IT modernization project begins, we work with your team to determine exactly which reports and analyses you need to keep. This ensures you can meet CRA retention requirements, carry out internal analyses, and fulfil your legal obligations. You also benefit from our extensive experience with complex legacy systems across a wide range of industries.
Even decades after your legacy system has been retired, ViewBox keeps your evaluations clear, filterable, and accessible at all times. You retain full control of your data without maintaining the original source system or paying for additional software licences.
Whether you are preparing for an external CRA audit, answering internal questions, or meeting legal requirements, you stay in control. You have instant access to well-structured enterprise data, backed by a sound data lifecycle management strategy.
Efficient Project Execution and Measurable Economic Value
Fast implementation, lasting savings, and a sustainable ROI
Retiring a legacy system typically takes one to six months, depending on the complexity of the system, its data structures, and the total data volume. With our proven, standardized methodology, even very large system landscapes can be archived efficiently and securely, with full traceability.
We have migrated large enterprise systems with several terabytes of complex relational data into ViewBox. All business-critical reports, custom evaluations, and audit-ready documentation are preserved in the process.
You benefit from clear financial and operational advantages, including:
- No more ongoing software licences for legacy applications and databases
- Lower hardware maintenance and hosting costs for outdated IT infrastructure
- Reduced internal workload through centralized, audit-ready data access
- Simpler CRA compliance as part of a modern data lifecycle management strategy
Many of our clients achieve a full return on investment (ROI) within the first year. You free up your internal IT team, keep budgets under control, and bring your historical data into a well-structured data lifecycle management approach.
System Analysis
The first step toward successful IT modernization
Every successful legacy system retirement starts with a detailed analysis of your existing IT environment. This analysis provides the foundation for accurate timelines, a realistic estimate of data volumes, and a clear picture of the technical requirements. Based on these insights, we prepare a fixed-price proposal that gives you full cost certainty.
We assess both technical and business-critical factors, including:
- Access options for your existing systems, such as direct database connections, APIs, or data exports
- The type, structure, and total volume of your enterprise data
- The relevance of existing reports, evaluations, and financial records required for CRA compliance
- Customizations, including in-house developments, third-party interfaces, and specialized modules
We document every finding in detail and turn these insights into a clear, transparent proposal. This allows you to make well-informed decisions about when and how to retire your legacy system.
Project Archiving
Clearly structured and securely executed
Once the system analysis is complete, the legacy system retirement begins with a joint kick-off meeting and clearly defined milestones. From this point on, we take the technical and organizational workload off your shoulders.
Our services include:
- Technical setup of system access and secure export interfaces
- Complete extraction and structuring of all business-critical data
- Accurate reconstruction of key business reports and customized evaluations
- Complete, audit-ready documentation to support CRA compliance
Depending on the complexity of your system, your IT modernization project is completed within one to six months. Our experienced project managers guide you through every phase, from initial planning to final acceptance. Thanks to transparent communication, clear processes, and our proven, standardized methodology, the effort required from your internal IT team is kept to a minimum.
At the end of the project, we carry out thorough testing and formal acceptance together with your team. This confirms that your historical enterprise data is complete, accurate, and fully traceable.
Final Archiving Results
Full access to your data, decades after the system is shut down
Once your legacy system retirement is complete, all relevant tables, business-critical documents, and key reports are migrated to ViewBox. This secure, web-based retrieval system gives authorized users fast, audit-ready access to your data for decades after the shutdown, completely independent of the original applications.
A key advantage: We reconstruct all essential standard evaluations and customized reports. This lets you carry out operational analyses, legal reviews, and CRA audits without buying additional software licences or maintaining costly technical dependencies.
After successful implementation and formal approval, you can shut down your legacy system for good. The entire decommissioning process is fully documented to provide legal certainty.
At the end of the project, you receive detailed process documentation that records all key information, including:
- The scope and methodology of the data transfer
- The structure and organization of the archived content
- The testing and formal acceptance phases carried out by our team
- The key process milestones, documented as part of your data lifecycle management strategy
In addition, every step of the process is logged in our internal ticketing system. From the initial data export through final acceptance to the compliant deletion of your source system, we maintain an unbroken chain of custody. This gives compliance teams and external auditors clear evidence that the archiving project was carried out securely and correctly.
ViewBox Enterprise
Use archived data from legacy systems securely and quickly
With ViewBox Enterprise, AvenDATA offers a powerful platform for secure access to data from decommissioned ERP systems and other legacy systems. The solution combines modern search and analysis functions with high performance, comprehensive security mechanisms and intelligent, AI-supported features.
ViewBox Enterprise ensures that your archived data:
- remains understandable and usable many years after a system has been shut down
- can be searched, filtered, and analyzed quickly and precisely
- is available in an audit-proof, traceable form for both internal and external audits
- is protected against unauthorized access through role-based permissions
- can be analyzed more efficiently with the help of intelligent features
- remains available independently of the original application
One standout feature is automated, rule-based data deletion. On the basis of statutory, contractual or company internal retention periods, data can be deleted in a controlled, traceable and documented manner once the applicable period has expired. In this way, ViewBox Enterprise supports companies in meeting their data protection and compliance requirements.
This keeps your historical company data available for the long term.
Ready to Take
Your Next Step?
Let us plan your legacy system retirement together and take control of your enterprise data lifecycle.
In a one-hour consultation, we analyze your legacy environment together, whether you run complex ERP, CRM, payroll, or proprietary DMS platforms. We show you live how to carry out your IT modernization securely while keeping your historical enterprise data permanently accessible and audit-ready. This helps you meet CRA requirements as part of a well-structured data lifecycle management strategy.
During this session, you receive:
- A strategic assessment of your existing data structures, migration options, and reporting requirements
- A live demonstration of ViewBox, our proven archiving platform
- A clear technical roadmap showing how we reconstruct your standard reports and customized evaluations
- A realistic project assessment with accurate timelines, required effort, and full cost certainty
Full transparency from day one:
Our project proposals are based on clearly defined fixed prices, with no hidden costs or later renegotiations. Quality, reliability, and a strong ROI are our focus when we work with TSX-listed companies and international enterprises.
Book your free data lifecycle management consultation today and move your IT modernization forward.
Instant Answers to Your Questions
Personalized, risk-free consultation on data lifecycle management
Personalized, risk-free consultation on data lifecycle management
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