Why Modernizing Legacy Software is Slow, Costly, and Risky (And How Low-Code Can Fix It)

Every CIO faces the same frustrating question: How can we keep up with modern demands while dragging a legacy system behind us? Legacy software may have once been your business backbone, but today, it’s often the reason your competitors are moving faster. Did you know that 85% of enterprise architects say legacy systems hold back digital transformation?

As a CIO, you know the stakes. Legacy systems demand more resources than they return. What if something breaks? What about spiralling costs? And can your team manage the risks? These challenges make modernization projects the task everyone postpones. But what if modernization didn’t have to be a slow, costly, or risky endeavour?

Seven in ten Fortune 500 companies have already started the most important IT transition: moving from a paradigm of inflexible, high-code applications to Low-Code and No-Code platforms. These platforms are so easy to build and manage that even employees outside the IT department can use them to create apps. But to truly address the challenges of legacy software modernization, an LCNC platform must support ambitious and complex projects.

Thus, these platforms should be evaluated based on the core causes of why modernization projects are inherently slow, costly, and risky—and how LCNC platforms specifically address these barriers. Let’s dive into why these projects face such challenges.

Why Modernizing Legacy Software is Slow, Costly, and Risky

Too Slow

The trouble with legacy modernization projects is that they claim timelines of months, but they often take years. No amount of planning, rewriting code, or testing can compress these timelines. This is because, in most businesses, legacy systems are deeply embedded in the organization's operations. They have intricate architectures and countless interdependencies. While a CIO might hope to visualize the architecture as a clean blueprint, in reality, it resembles a chaotic wall of graffiti.

Additionally, many organizations face skill gaps. Legacy systems often use outdated programming languages, and finding professionals skilled in these older systems is extremely difficult. Another factor that slows projects is employee resistance—teams are used to existing workflows, and adapting to new systems can create friction. As a result, work that seems like it should take months often stretches into years.

High Costs

The development cost is the largest component of legacy modernization. For older systems, organizations often need specialists, whose fees are typically high. When timelines extend, costs spiral beyond the initial budget.

Moreover, maintaining dual systems during migration—both the legacy and the new one—further inflates costs. The longer the transition takes, the more expensive it becomes

Significant Risks

The biggest issue with modernization projects is their unpredictability. IT leaders often feel they don’t even know what they don’t know. This uncertainty can be deeply unsettling, especially when they realize the timeline for the project might outlast their tenure in the organization.

Downtimes are another major risk during such projects. Migrating systems can disrupt operations, causing delays in critical business processes. Additionally, the scale of these projects increases the likelihood of data loss, breaches, or compliance failures.

Why CIOs Avoid Modernization

While CIOs recognize the importance of modernization, they often avoid or delay these projects. The sheer scope and risk make modernization seem like an insurmountable challenge. Most leaders aren’t prepared for the resource-intensive and disruptive process, so they choose to postpone it. This brings us back to the question: Is there a way to modernize legacy systems without all these drawbacks?

Low-Code and No-Code platforms offer a compelling answer. Let’s explore how these platforms can tackle these challenges.

How Low-Code Platforms Solve Modernization Challenges

A word of caution here - Not all LCNC platforms are the same. When we say LCNC, we mean a platform that is powerful enough for IT teams while still being accessible and user-friendly for non-IT users. It makes No-Code truly powerful and Low-Code simple.

Amoga fits this category within the LCNC market landscape. This distinction is critical, as many CIOs—rightfully—feel that No-Code apps can be shallow and Low-Code apps can be difficult to scale. Often, this impression stems from using partial LCNC platforms designed for entirely different purposes. Amoga, however, makes even ambitious projects like legacy modernization quick, affordable, and risk-free.

Speeding Up the Process

Amoga’s LCNC platform is so user-friendly that anyone with basic computer knowledge can go from having never built an application to creating highly useful apps in just one week of training. Across the entire development cycle, Amoga boosts speed by about 10x. Pre-designed templates play a huge role in this, allowing you to rapidly prototype and deploy applications.

Additionally, Amoga includes features like CMMN and BPMN workflows, which help eliminate bottlenecks and reduce the time needed to make automation a reality for your organization.

Lowering Costs

Development costs are the largest expense in legacy modernization, and Amoga can reduce them by up to 75%. This is because Amoga significantly shortens development time and removes the need to hire highly specialized developers. With minimal training, you can create a team of citizen developers to build applications.

What sets Amoga apart is that it combines powerful No-Code and simplified Low-Code capabilities into one system. Amoga is designed for enterprise and mid-market needs, enabling you to build CRMs, ERPs, and other sophisticated applications. This means that the cost savings extend across a large part of your IT ecosystem, making modernization both affordable and efficient.

Reducing Risks

With its robust security and compliance features, Amoga helps you manage the risks of a large-scale legacy modernization project. The platform is ISO/IEC 27001 certified and includes built-in enterprise-grade encryption, SSO, OAuth 2.0, and MFA. Role-based access management eliminates the risk of unauthorized data access, while automatic audit trails enhance transparency and simplify compliance. Furthermore, Amoga incorporates input validation, output encoding, and cryptographic protocols. This ensures that even citizen developers can build applications without increasing the risk of shadow IT.

Amoga’s microservice-based architecture further reduces risk by isolating failures and maintaining uninterrupted service. For mid-market and enterprise applications, scalability and reliability are often stumbling blocks for LCNC platforms. However, Amoga uses Temporal.io to ensure that workflows and processes run smoothly, even at scale, removing operational risks that CIOs are rightfully cautious about.

Proven Success

Over the last three years, our confidence in Amoga as a true LCNC platform for enterprise needs has been validated repeatedly—not just by market research leaders such as Deloitte and KPMG but also by our track record of delivering results for clients in major industries.

That said, we understand that every organization’s challenges are unique. We would love the opportunity to speak with you, learn about your specific needs, and answer your questions about how Amoga can help.