The topic of integrating legacy technology systems with web technology systems often comes up in the newspaper industry.
There is a key difference between Content Legacy Companies (e.g. newspapers) and Other Legacy Companies (e.g. pharmaceuticals). With the world wide web and information technology becoming part of everyday life, every company becomes a content company in certain ways.
In the case of other legacy companies like pharmaceuticals, aeronautics, construction, etc. their legacy products are not going away nor changing as drastically as a result of the world wide web and IT as is happening in the case of content legacy companies like newspapers.
For other legacy companies, it makes sense to integrate the web systems like content management with their core products because their other core products are not fading away as a result of the web and IT.
However, in print media companies like newspapers whose legacy has been content, their product in its legacy form is going away as a direct result of web and IT. So for them it may make sense to not spend too much effort on integrating legacy systems with web systems. Instead, it may be a better strategy to spend more resources on enhancing and upgrading the web systems and digital media products. So for newspapers today, the 1990s holy grail of having one seamless print+web content management system may be less relevant in 2007. It may actually make better business sense to to keep the print cms and web cms separate, focus more on web and digital media and allow newspaper printed on paper to retire over the next decade.
