How to Modernize Legacy Systems Without Disrupting the Business

Effective Solutions to Reduce Technical Debt and Innovate Quickly

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Modernizing legacy systems is essential to reduce technical debt and accelerate innovation without disrupting business operations. In this article, we explore solutions to effectively replace, extend, or migrate outdated systems.

Over time, every company accumulates?technical debt. While not an explicit cost in the budget, it hides in outdated systems that require costly maintenance, pose integration challenges, slow down processes, and increase exposure to cybersecurity risks.

This technical debt is often the result of seemingly sensible decisions: temporary fixes or quick solutions that become permanent, outdated technologies left unupdated, or prioritizing fast delivery over long-term benefits. While these choices may make sense at the time, they inevitably increase complexity and hinder future projects.

According to McKinsey’s research , CIOs estimate that technical debt accounts for 20% to 40% of the total value of their technology estate before depreciation.

For years, the prevailing mindset was, "If it works, don’t touch it." Today, the real issue is not whether it works but how much it costs to keep it working and how much it slows down the company’s growth. Worse, the fear of “If you touch it, it’ll break” has led many organizations to avoid intervention, perpetuating a vicious cycle of inefficiency and stagnation.

Technical debt acts like an anchor, dragging down every step toward innovation. Data confirms this: organizations in the top 20% for technical debt severity are 40% more likely to experience failed or incomplete IT modernization projects than those with lighter technical debt profiles.

Key Challenges of Technical Debt

These "dinosaurs" monopolize IT resources and complicate digital transformation for several reasons:

• High maintenance costs: Outdated systems require significant resources for maintenance, including specialized personnel, complex updates, and challenging integrations with modern technologies. Each modification to these systems risks downtime, raising operational costs and diverting resources from innovative projects.
• Security risks: The lack of updates and support makes legacy systems more vulnerable to cyber threats. Additionally, non-compliance with modern regulations, such as GDPR, can expose companies to legal penalties and reputational damage.
• Limited integration: Legacy systems often lack compatibility with modern tools such as CRM, cloud ERP, or data analytics platforms. This creates informational silos, hinders process automation and slows down business operations. Custom solutions to connect disparate systems further increase costs and introduce new vulnerabilities.
• Reduced scalability: Legacy systems often fail to support the growth required to meet expanding business needs.
• Dependence on specialized skills: Managing legacy systems requires personnel with expertise in outdated programming languages, which are increasingly scarce in the market.
• Decreased productivity: Slow processes and operational inefficiencies stemming from outdated systems can reduce overall organizational productivity.

How to Evolve Legacy Systems

Even if a legacy system continues to function (with workarounds, maintenance costs, and associated security risks), its inability to adapt to modern technological paradigms such as edge computing or intelligent automation makes it a barrier to innovation and process evolution.

According to Gartner, there are seven strategies for modernizing legacy systems. However, in practice, the primary approaches are three:

• Legacy system replacement: When software becomes obsolete and no longer supports the current business model, full replacement may be necessary.
• Legacy system extension: If the application still functions well, it can be modernized by extending its capabilities, such as integrating new features or improving interoperability.
• Legacy system migration: When there is an urgent need to transform key processes, migrating to a modern architecture can improve performance and scalability.

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At WEGG , we believe in the importance of a strategic approach to modernizing business processes. This requires flexible, extensible, and scalable technologies like?low-code, which adapt to evolving organizational needs with minimal development effort.

To best support our clients in modernizing their business processes, we have identified?Mendix ?as the ideal solution to extend, migrate, or replace outdated systems without disrupting operations.

Mendix is a low-code platform tailored for the enterprise market, excelling in managing complex projects and integrations. Positioned in 2024 Gartner? Magic Quadrant? for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms as a Leader for eight consecutive years, it offers unparalleled capabilities:

• Replacing legacy systems: When a legacy system no longer supports the business model, Mendix rapidly develops scalable and modern applications to replace obsolete ones, ensuring a smooth transition and minimizing operational disruptions.
• Extending legacy systems: For systems that still perform adequately, Mendix allows for extending their capabilities by integrating new functionalities and automating processes, preserving existing investments while enhancing productivity and efficiency.
• Migrating legacy systems: In urgent cases requiring migration, Mendix supports rebuilding applications on modern architectures like the cloud, reducing risks and improving performance and scalability.

For example, Mendix’s native integration with SAP enables the creation of extensible applications to modernize ERP ecosystems, particularly during migrations from legacy ERP systems to?SAP S/4HANA.

How to Ensure Business Continuity During Modernization

In revising business processes using low-code technologies, WEGG relies on Mendix primarily for its ability to ensure a?gradual transition.

This technology enables incremental replacement, extension, or migration of legacy systems, avoiding the "big bang" approach that often leads to complete operational downtime. With its microservices-based architecture, Mendix allows specific system components to be modernized or enhanced without impacting the entire ecosystem.

Additionally, the platform supports?parallel deployment, enabling the testing and implementation of new applications alongside existing systems. This ensures continuous business operations during integration, with solutions gradually becoming operational.

Innovation means evolving without stopping: With this approach, businesses can modernize processes while maintaining operational continuity, ensuring they stay competitive without disrupting their rhythm.

Want to learn more about modernizing legacy systems? Contact us at [email protected] for a consultation!

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