Partner content: The loss of skills and expertise around legacy systems is becoming a challenge for telcos when it comes to automation. But it doesn’t have to be.
The CORTEX automation platform provides reusable automations through support for any interface or data output, allowing risk-free retirement of legacy systems.
The challenge
According to the 2025 UK Talent Shortage report from Experis, IT and Data Skills are the hardest expertise to find[1]. While shortages affect new technology skills — such as AI and cybersecurity — there is an equally (if not more) important challenge when it comes to the skills shortage: expertise in legacy systems.
Most telcos have a complex mix of these legacy systems, which is likely to include disparate and multiple billing or inventory systems for different processes, customer types, or departments. They also run different generations of technology – from copper in the fixed network, all the way over to 2G mobile.
At the same time, they are simultaneously implementing advanced applications and systems, such as 5G Standalone and network slices, as well as applications and network systems that harness AI and Machine Learning (ML), for example.
Lost of expertise
The problem for telcos is that as the engineers and specialists that developed and maintained legacy systems over the previous decades start to retire or move on, the new generation of IT experts and graduates won’t be interested in learning about legacy systems – they want to learn about the funky applications such as AI, ML, cybersecurity, and so on (see graph below 2).
In some cases, organisations are becoming so short of the right people with legacy expertise that the challenge is acknowledged on the corporate risk register. Competition for the requisite skills for the future is fierce – but expertise for legacy systems is becoming increasingly scarce.
It means that telcos face a growing skills gap when it comes to the expertise and knowledge required to maintain legacy platforms and systems that still form the bedrock of many telcos’ operations.
Unfortunately, the integration of legacy systems is essential for any cross-domain automation projects and processes. So, any simplification project for automation – and, ultimately, hyperautomation – requires the creation of a supportable operation that spans legacy and newer systems and processes.
In turn, it is essential to start automation projects that must embrace legacy systems as soon as possible, while the skills and expertise of older engineers is still available.
Automating legacy preserves knowledge
Automating around the ever-decreasing pool of engineers telcos rely on for the aging legacy, provides breathing space, creates improved job satisfaction for them, creates longer ramp offs, allows preservation of legacy knowledge, and lowers risk.
After all, while most telcos have plans to eventually retire and replace legacy systems, they are likely to be around for the foreseeable future. At We Are CORTEX we term this process of gradual retirement ‘Simplification’.
But before taking action it is essential to secure a clear understanding of any dependencies that relate to that particular system, because it is likely that multiple legacy systems are involved in any cross-domain process.
The We Are CORTEX automation platform is highly flexible and agnostic to the underlying interfaces with which it interacts. It uses process microservices, which are reusable and enable each set of interfaces / data outputs to be connected.
Purpose built for telco, it comes with more than 200 pre-built Function Blocks, which provide discrete operations that can be connected as needed. This naturally leads to portability and reusability. It means that any retired or redundant legacy solution can be removed without disruption to the operational flows and processes.
Supporting essential interfaces
For example, our platform supports generic interfaces, such as HTTP REST & SOAP Web Services, SFTP/FTP, SSH/Telnet, SNMP, TCP Sockets, IMAP, and CORBA/3GPP, to name a few.
It also supports interfaces for dedicated third-party systems and devices, including Microsoft PowerShell, LDAP (Active Directory File System), LDAPS, Windows OS (Event Log, Service Control), and Databases (Oracle, SQL Server, ODBC & OLEDB database connectivity etc.).
Virtual Machine integrations – including VMWare, Microsoft Azure, and AWS, and IP telephony systems, such as Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Avaya Call Manager, as well as enterprise business applications such as Salesforce.com, Microsoft CRM, Oracle NetSuite, Google G-Suite, and Office 365 – are also supported.
It allows telcos to ensure that any automation can support legacy, current and future systems at the same time — including proprietary, within cross-domain process — until such time as they can be retired.
Most importantly, these automations do not need to be lost as they can be redirected and reused to support new interfaces.
To find out more, download our recent white paper by clicking here.
[1] https://www.experis.co.uk/blog/2025/03/closing-the-digital-skills-gap-the-2025-talent-shortage
[2] https://stlpartners.com/research/future-skills-tracker-report-2025/
