A lot of businesses today still espouse legacy systems and applications that were made more than twenty years ago. These systems are meant to serve their purpose, but modern applications offer a lot of benefits that companies should take note of. The switch from upgrading legacy platforms to modern solutions can sometimes significantly impact organisations in enhancing efficiency, cutting costs, improving security, and staying ahead of technological change.
In this article, we discuss the drawbacks of legacy systems, the benefits of modern applications, and why the time has come for upgrading a business’ technology stack. In this article, we will compare legacy systems with modern applications in terms of cost, security, scalability, functionality, and other factors. These days, it does sound like a good business decision to invest in new technology, as you will see below.
The Challenges of Legacy Systems
Legacy systems refer to old methods, technologies, applications and computer systems that are outdated but still being used. As businesses grow, the need to modernise applications becomes more pressing to ensure scalability and efficiency. Many large enterprises have critical business systems that were built 20-30 years ago or more. Examples include mainframe systems, traditional client-server applications, and legacy databases.
These legacy systems powered the first waves of digital transformation. However, maintaining and enhancing them has become increasingly difficult over time. Some of the main downsides of legacy systems include:
High Maintenance Costs
Legacy systems need specialised skills and resources to manage outdated languages, databases, hardware, and operating systems. Because technology is constantly changing, companies are finding it more difficult to integrate new features and spend more money to hire qualified talent to work on aging systems. Legacy platforms are usually costly to maintain.
Security Vulnerabilities
Systems that were designed for closed private networks without Internet connectivity were older. This lack of modern security controls such as encryption, identity management, network segmentation and the rest. As such, legacy platforms are very susceptible to cyberattacks and data breaches.
Inflexibility & Lack of Agility
Monolithic legacy systems with tightly coupled architectures cannot be changed easily. They lack the flexibility and agility that businesses need today. For example, legacy mainframes make it extremely tedious to add new interfaces, integrate with other systems or make changes in response to market demands.
Vendor Dependence
Legacy platforms often depend on outdated vendor technologies, many of which are no longer supported. Businesses get locked into proprietary vendor products, face escalating licensing/support costs and have limited options when the vendor goes out of business or stops supporting a product line.
Lack of Innovation
The majority of IT budgets in legacy-dependent companies go towards “keeping the lights on,” i.e., just maintaining existing systems. This leaves little room for funding innovation initiatives, building new solutions or experimenting with emerging technologies like AI/ML, blockchain, IoT etc.
Loss of Technical Skills
As legacy programming languages like COBOL and niche hardware/databases become obsolete, companies are facing a skills gap. Younger IT talent prefers to work on modern technology stacks. Legacy skill loss can leave enterprises unable to maintain or enhance critical systems.
The Benefits of Modern Applications
Modern applications provide many compelling advantages over legacy systems by leveraging contemporary software development approaches, cloud platforms and cutting-edge technologies. Some major benefits include:
Lower TCO
Instead of managing on-premise infrastructure, modern apps use cloud platforms like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. This saves costs on hardware, data centers, ops and IT personnel. Serverless computing further optimises costs by providing pay-per-use pricing. Updates and new features are delivered automatically as part of SaaS models.
Enhanced Security
Leading cloud platforms invest heavily in advanced security controls and processes like encryption, access controls, vulnerability management, DDoS protection and more. They stay compliant with the latest security standards and best practices. This offers stronger protection than what most legacy systems can achieve.
Greater Scalability
The scaling problems for monolithic legacy apps are because they were not designed with scalability to elastic compute and storage requirements. In contrast to such modern apps, modern apps scale the different components using microservices and containerisation. This increases the cost efficiency through auto-scaling of cloud resources based on demand.
Improved Agility
The solutions are now focused on SOA, APIs and continuous delivery through DevOps. New features can be developed quickly with iterative releases and gradual release of changes to accommodate fast-changing business requirements. Modern apps allow for greater agility and are a huge difference maker in how competitive you stand in the market.
Innovation Enablement
Modernisation unlocks resources from technology spending to new forward-leaning AI, ML, AR/VR, blockchain, etc. and exposed APIs and microservices provide the flexible platform for steaming the new novel solutions that are not afforded by the cobwebs of legacy.
Access to Cutting-Edge Capabilities
Modern cloud platforms and SaaS solutions integrate the latest capabilities like advanced analytics, conversational AI chatbots, IoT, enterprise mobility and more. Staying current with technology innovation gives companies a strong competitive edge.
The drivers, benefits and capabilities discussed above illustrate why legacy modernisation is so critical. The longer companies wait, the higher the technical debt accumulates, making change even harder. The opportunity cost of sticking with aging systems rises steadily, too.
Comparison Between Legacy Systems and Modern Applications
The table below summarises some of the key differences between legacy systems and modern applications:
| Category | Legacy Systems | Modern Applications |
| Infrastructure | On-premise servers and data centers | Cloud platforms (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS) |
| Architecture | Monolithic, tightly coupled | Microservices, SOA, APIs |
| Code | Procedural languages (COBOL, FORTRAN) | Higher-level OO languages (Java, JavaScript, Python etc.) |
| Databases | Legacy DBs (IBM DB2, Oracle) | Cloud-native DBs (DynamoDB, CosmosDB etc.) |
| Scalability | Limited, manual | Auto-scaling, elastic resources |
| Security | Perimeter defenses only | End-to-end, embedded controls |
| Delivery | Waterfall projects, long cycles | Agile, continuous updates |
| Innovation | Constrained budgets | Resources for new initiatives |
| Costs | Rising maintenance costs | Reduced TCO with cloud models |
| Skills | Legacy skill gap | Mainstream & future-proof skills |
The table clearly shows that modern applications outshine legacy systems in multiple technology dimensions. As cloud platforms continue to adopt the latest innovations, there is only going to be an increasing gap.
Why Now is the Right Time to Modernise
For most companies, whether or not it is about legacy systems modernisation is not a question but a question of when. As digital transformation accelerates as a result of COVID-19, every industry has had a stronger case for scrapping out technology stacks. Now is the best window of opportunity for these reasons:
- Cloud solutions and digital experiences become more and more relied upon as remote/hybrid work models become more the rule than the exception.
- Expectations from customers have skyrocketed – online convenience, mobile accessibility and personalisation are mandatory.
- This requires resilient supply chains, which require visibility, automation, and analytics, which legacy systems cannot achieve.
- In essence, the more technical debt that accumulates, the harder and more expensive it is to fix a legacy system the later you move the fixed date.
- Modern tech like cloud, AI/ml, IoT, etc., are being leveraged by competitors and disruptive startups to capture the market share.
- Digitisation is taking place globally, and the demand for software developers is greater than the supply. Access to technical skills, especially legacy skills, is becoming more constrained.
Due to the above trends, legacy modernisation has changed from “nice to have” to “must have.” Postponing upgrades costs more than the short-term efforts involved. COVID has been a wake-up call in this regard.
Where to Begin with Legacy Modernisation
For some organisations, ripping out and replacing entire legacy estates may be impractical or tremendously risky. Others cannot afford to delay wholesale modernisation programs any longer. Most companies fall somewhere in between.
Regardless of approach, an overarching cloud strategy is vital—it serves as the destination for all modernisation efforts. Within IT estates, certain applications or systems, such as legacy websites, peripheral systems, and customer-facing apps, may be easier to upgrade than others.
Some other initial focus areas include:
- Migrating data to cloud data platforms for consolidated analytics
- Shutting down outdated hardware like mainframes and midrange systems
- Moving critical applications to IaaS platforms using lift-and-shift techniques
- Adopt cloud-based business solutions for HR, CRM, ERP, etc.
- Developing greenfield cloud-native applications such as customer/employee portals
Containers provide tools for the encapsulation and migration of legacy apps into different cloud infrastructures without too many changes in the code. APIs enable the integration of old and new systems, and low-code platforms can be used to rebuild old UIs quickly.
Organisations should choose the top priority systems to modernise and take an incremental, value-driven approach. Quick wins give momentum to bigger transformation programs. With a plan of action in hand, legacy modernisation can be performed in reasonable chunks of time.
The Path Forward
Legacy systems have provided good service for enterprises but have had their useful life cut in half. At the same time, maintenance costs and risks have increased dramatically. Better security, agility, efficiency, and innovation capabilities are table stakes in competing in the digital era.
Staying up to speed on technological innovation is no longer an option for most companies. Modernising core platforms, software architecture, and technical skills in order to reduce technical debt is not just important to be successful but also necessary to survive as legacy systems mend with increased technical debt.
As remote work and digitisation spreads, modernisation is necessary to withstand the inevitable disruptions of customer or employee experience, resilient operations, and the ability to generate new revenue. Rather than taking a giant leap, most firms can undertake this through steady cloud adoption and incremental upgrades.
Now is the time to evaluate legacy estates objectively, prioritise high-value modernisation initiatives and commit to a cloud-centric technology strategy. By getting ahead of the innovation curve, companies can delight customers, empower employees and maintain competitive advantage for the next decade.
