Published:
Feb 05, 2024
Author:
Sarah Parsons Wolter
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In today's rapidly evolving technological landscape, the demand for expertise in outdated systems is unusual. However, this week a German railway company posted a job description for an IT administrator with knowledge of operating MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 to oversee their critical railway infrastructure.
The ongoing use of legacy operating systems is an approach seen in various industries. Airplane manufacturers, for instance, continue to use floppy disks to update avionics in older aircraft. Entertainment venues like Chuck E. Cheese used floppy disks for animatronic operations for years, and it wasn't until 2019 that the U.S. military decommissioned the IBM Series-1 computers from the 1970s, once central to nuclear weapons systems management.
This reliance on antiquated technology is not limited to the transportation and defense sectors. Numerous financial institutions also still depend on similarly outdated systems, incurring high maintenance costs and complicating compliance and operational risk management. A recent study from IDC Financial Insights forecasts global banks are on track to spend +$57bn on legacy payments technology by 2028. As the financial industry sees the rise of new OS and software solutions, it prompts one to question whether traditional financial institutions are prepared to fully transition to modern platforms, or if they, like the German railway, will continue to depend on legacy systems.
Regarding the job listing, its removal has sparked curiosity. We wonder whether the position was filled, if the search for a suitable candidate is still underway, or if the company was embarrassed. But for the moment, the German trains are still running on outdated infrastructure…
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