Cella Software exists because of a problem we spent thirty years watching grow: enterprises paying a fortune to keep dead systems alive, purely for the data inside them. We decided the data deserved a better and lower risk home – and the systems deserved switching off.
Why keep paying for legacy systems you no longer use?
Spend long enough in enterprise data and you see the same thing everywhere. A business moves to a new platform, takes only what it needs, and leaves decades of history behind in the old system – which then cannot be switched off, because the records inside it must be kept for legal, tax and regulatory reasons. So it runs on: licences, hardware, support and risk, for a system nobody uses day to day.
We kept meeting that problem – across SAP and non-SAP estates, in sectors including energy, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and government – and kept watching organisations accept it as a cost of doing business. The costs have increased with more universal cloud adoption and cyber risks. Around 15% of IT budgets goes on maintaining legacy systems. Most of that spend buys nothing but the right to keep old data. It is not a cost of doing business. It is a problem with an answer.
Why we built cella
Your data has value
Cella was built by people who have spent 30+ years working with enterprise legacy data – extracting it, archiving it, reporting on it, and answering for it in audits. That experience shaped one conviction: the data an organisation must keep should not dictate the systems it must run. Retire the system; keep the data in something built for the job, ensure compliance, improve reporting, mitigate risk and save money.
So that is what we built. Cella extracts the data from legacy applications – SAP and non-SAP alike – and holds it in one secure, reportable platform, with retention, legal hold and disposal governed as standard. The platform launched in 2020 and has been proving the idea at enterprise scale ever since: hundreds of systems retired, their data still working, their costs gone.
What we believe
Let go of the cost, not the data
Our strapline is also our founding belief. Four principles follow from it, and they shape every decision we make about the product:
Data outlives systems
Records must stay accessible, searchable and reportable for decades – long after the application that created them is gone.
Compliance is built in, not bolted on
Retention rules, legal hold, GDPR disposal and dual 4-eye approval belong in the platform, not in a spreadsheet beside it.
History is an asset
Kept in full business context, decades of data become a foundation for reporting, AI-powered natural language search and analytics – not a liability in a server room or cloud.
Off means off
Decommissioning is complete retirement – the cost, risk and complexity of the old system go for good, not into storage.
The people behind Cella
Cella was built by people who had spent their careers inside the problem it solves. Between them, the founders have decades in data management and enterprise software, and they had watched the same thing happen over and over: organisations paying to keep old systems running purely for the records inside them.
Andy Hamlyn (Chief Executive Officer)
Andy Hamlyn is a Co-Founder of Cella Software and brings more than 30 years of experience in enterprise technology. Previously, he served as Deputy CEO and COO of AMT-SYBEX, which was acquired by Capita plc in 2014. He subsequently became COO of Capita’s Software Division, where he also led and grew a portfolio of more than ten B2B software businesses.
Andy also mentors early-stage technology companies and is a Non-Executive Director of Partner Management Group. Driven by a passion for helping people and organisations thrive, he combines leadership, business growth and relationship-building expertise to create lasting value for clients, partners and teams.
Nick Parkin (Chief Product & Technology Officer)
Nick Parkin is a Co-Founder of Cella Software and holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science. He has spent over 30 years in SAP data management, system decommissioning and legacy data archiving, and his knowledge of the SAP data market runs deep – he has supported customers across Europe, the Americas and Asia for most of that time.
Nick’s focus is helping organisations retire old systems without losing the data inside them: keeping records accessible and reportable, cutting what it costs to hold on to a legacy estate, and meeting data privacy obligations in full.
Cella today
Proven at enterprise scale
50+
enterprise clients
600+
systems decommissioned
40+
legacy system types
Today Cella is trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major European multinationals and public sector organisations across Europe, the Americas and Asia – in energy, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, government and beyond. The team behind it carries 30+ years of legacy data experience, and the platform keeps growing: new systems retired, new capabilities shipped, ready for AI-powered natural language search and analytics across your data.
Any questions?
About Cella Software
If you have a question, please use our short form to send it over. We’re always happy to chat.
Cella Software is an enterprise software company. We make Cella, a platform that retires legacy systems – SAP and non-SAP – while keeping their data accessible, reportable and compliant.
One thing, deliberately: legacy system decommissioning. Cella extracts the data from systems you no longer want to run, holds it in one secure platform built on SAP HANA, and lets you switch the old systems off for good – cutting up to 80% of their running cost.
The wider team behind Cella have spent hundreds of years in enterprise legacy data, and the platform has been proving itself at enterprise scale since 2020.
600+ systems decommissioned across 40+ system types, for 50+ enterprise clients.
Come and see what we built
Tell us about the systems you are still paying for, and we will show you what letting go looks like.
