In today's economic climate a corporate philosophy of thriftiness pervades. IT organizations are mandated to preserve, protect, and extend their existing investments. Companies are not about to scrap legacy technology systems into which they've invested thousands upon thousands of dollars and man hours; they will instead attempt to meet new technology challenges by leveraging existing applications. Although it is often tempting to embrace the latest and greatest technology advances, the desire to do so must be tempered with the ability to understand how new initiatives will integrate with legacy systems. The days of considering "legacy" a disparaging term are gone, and in fact, to abandon legacy systems in many cases would be to lose competitive advantage.