Their homegrown ERP system, running on an IBM Power Systems i (AS/400) was developed over the course of 20+ years and had several shortcomings that limited IT and Business agility:

• Difficult to share application data and reuse business logic: The integrations with other components, partners, and vendors were implemented as point-to-point interfaces, typically file-based, using a variety of disparate technologies and tools
• Slow and expensive to change and maintain: Over the years, the system codebase accumulated high levels of technical debt
• Hard to migrate a particular system/component to a new platform: The application modules are tightly coupled via a shared database and direct program calls, resulting in a large number of implicit dependencies. As a result, the IT staff spent much of their time putting out fires and keeping the lights on, as opposed to innovating and enabling business growth