Investing significant amounts of money into legacy IT software and hardware over the years is something many businesses of all sizes have done. With cloud computing making its way into the forefront of technology, Arthur Cole writes on IT Business Edge that companies need to look at how they can bridge the gap between legacy IT and the cloud and what makes sense for their own business.

"The point is, the cloud is not an either/or proposition," Cole said of the technology. "Just as it's short-sighted to view the cloud simply as an extension of traditional resources, so too is it wrong to pitch decades' worth of investment in internal infrastructure just because something new comes along. There's no reason why cloud architectures cannot retain the look and feel of traditional data environments even as legacy infrastructure becomes more cloud-like."

Cole said the goal of businesses with a large amount of IT equipment is to find a way to make them work in a single environment and allow both legacy IT and the cloud to be efficient and scalable for the company.

Enterprise Systems calls replacing all legacy IT with cloud computing right away the No. 1 mistake made by businesses. Despite the potential payoff companies see in the cloud, completely replacing an older system tends to come with a high up-front cost. Becase there's no guarantee that the solution a company chooses will be the best fit, it may be best to make a slow transition into the cloud instead of jumping feet first.