Home → Blog → Tech Debt Avalanche: Why Companies Are Modernizing Now With AI, Not Later
Accumulating tech debt is like borrowing on a credit card. Days go by, and before you know it, the interest costs more than the original purchase. The same applies to legacy software: the more outdated it becomes, the more time, money, and effort it takes just to keep it running.
However, most organizations have since relied on legacy software, following the “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it” approach. Over time, this leads to unexpected system downtimes, higher operational costs, reduced productivity, and security risks.
Good news: you can modernize your legacy software incrementally, with a series of baby steps. In this blog post, you’ll learn why companies need to modernize now and how to reduce tech debt with AI.
Why companies need to modernize their legacy software now, not later
More and more engineering leaders are realizing that they can’t scale and innovate while relying on outdated code and fragile systems.
As stated in the Redhat report, 95% of respondents have a positive attitude towards modernization and tend to spend more budget on software updates rather than on developing new products.
If you’re still underestimating the importance of software modernization, here are the key reasons why it should be on your radar.
Business transformation depends on technology
Technology drives a company’s growth and its ability to quickly make changes, launch new features and products, improve the user experience, and improve overall business performance. The greater the technical debt, the more difficult it is to change the current infrastructure and the more operational costs it incurs.
Legacy software maintenance often exceeds the value it provides
Your legacy system is eating up more budget than you think. The true cost of maintaining legacy software includes hidden costs such as poor customer experience, unexpected system glitches, reputational risks, and the inability to innovate.
Legacy software decreases productivity
Outdated systems often operate more slowly and may not integrate well with other tools. That’s why employees spend valuable time on manual work instead of focusing on high-value tasks.
Legacy systems have a higher risk of security breaches
Fixing security vulnerabilities in legacy systems is becoming more complex and expensive, as they are built on outdated frameworks that are not compatible with modern security protocols.
More than 58% of organizations that are currently modernizing have experienced benefits around security (58%), since modernized systems use updated technologies with fewer vulnerabilities, reducing the potential entry points for attackers.
Best practices in modernizing your software with AI
According to Gartner, by 2028, leaders who use structured methods to manage technical debt will report 50% fewer obsolete systems than those who do not.
The key to smart software modernization is to develop a strategic approach and create modernization priorities. Let’s review best practices for modernizing your software with AI and reducing technical debt.
Analyze if your company is ready to modernize
Before deciding on AI integration or replacement, companies should evaluate:
- Current infrastructure: Are systems cloud-ready or modular? Systems with modular architecture are easier to augment with AI.
- Business priorities: Which processes have the biggest impact on revenue, customer experience, or efficiency?
- Data availability and quality: AI relies on clean, structured data. Legacy systems with fragmented or low-quality data may require full replacement.
- Talent and resources: Does the company have the expertise to integrate AI, or would it be more efficient to replace outdated systems? Do you have the essential resources to hire a dedicated team?
Measure and prioritize your tech debt
Evaluate your technical debt by asking the following three questions:
- What is the potential threat and impact on our business performance and revenue if this isn’t fixed?
- What is the impact of modernization and how many systems and users will it affect?
- What is the cost of modernization and what is the cost of waiting?
To make tech debt modernization easier and decide what to tackle first, you can use the Gartner PAID assessment toolkit (Plan, Address, Ignore, Delay). It helps leaders visualize how tech debt impacts business, and decide what needs fixing first.
Use AI to build a culture of continuous modernization, not just a one-time clean-up
A “lift and shift” approach, where you just put AI on top of the existing tech stack, doesn’t work anymore. It just adds to the complexity of your architecture and doesn’t resolve the core of the problem.
That’s why organizations need to build a modernization strategy, and that is where AI can help. Companies can use AI to:
- Analyze their current architecture and provide tips ona modernization strategy
- Provide suggestions on what areas have to be modernized first
- Migrate the current system to the cloud
- Analyze the modernization cases in their industry
- Forecast how modernization can improve their business outcomes and key technology metrics
- Support automation testing and create test use cases
- Generate data-based reports on modernization results
Based on this data, organizations can create a phased modernization strategy and approach the software update incrementally, focusing on the most important areas first.
Track the results of modernization
Companies can track the results of software modernization by focusing on measurable outcomes and key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Reduced maintenance costs
Compare IT support and maintenance costs before and after modernization. Also, companies can track the number of emergency patches, hotfixes, and manual interventions required.
- Improved system performance
It’s essential to measure response times, transaction speeds, and system uptime, and to monitor load handling and processing capacity during peak periods.
- Security metrics
Track the number of security incidents or breaches over time, monitor compliance with regulatory standards, and measure the time required to fix vulnerabilities.
The goal of modernization is to improve current business processes
AI is an effective tool that can help you at the different stages of the modernization process. The key here is to remember that you should not just use AI to rewrite your old code, but to understand your existing systems, identify what really drives business value, and then modernize the processes that impact your business most. By doing so, AI becomes a tool for business transformation, not just technical change.
If you want to modernize your software with AI, you’re in the right place. Our team offers full-cycle AI consulting services – from strategy and data setup to model building and integration. Let’s discuss how technology can bring more value to your business!
